Sojourn
You wake slowly, head like lead with a tale of brother-sons and a birthing dream
I want to take the time before we get into this and thank Brother Rob for collaborating with me, contributing the wonderful music and poem. Stefan Baciu Who inspired this story after the feedback he gave on a stream of consciousness experiment I did back in December. As well as the perennial poet and my favourite editor Bence Ádók, and JLG Noga whose feedback on Third Piece of Eden had given lots to think about.
Overview
Where do dreams come from? Will they bring you into the next day? What happens when they’re used to flee into yesterday? Follow brother-sons Canterbury and Coyote as they walk through this bizarrely wrought corner of Toronto. A place of life and birth, a place of industry, a place where time flourishes for those of poor-soul too scared to stray into yesterday.
A Thousand Paper Butterflies
I see you.
A thousand paper butterflies
buried in the rain.
Despite it all, I want to return
to how it was before.
Before weatherworn wings sang
blackened hymns of praise, like
Wakefulness is wasteful.
Before your bones puddled in gutters,
and the stars had names.
I’m home,
I used to say
when you flew into the night.
A secret word, a small shape
fading into something large and dark.
But now the sky is (f)lightless.
Stars, fat and spiraled,
jutting from the earth
crunching underfoot.
I gave prayers, alms, and blood.
Spare one. Please. Spare one.
But the sky remained lightless,
and a puddle of blood
gathered in your mush.
A broken moon, a womb
wet with the redness of dreams.
A beetcoloured newborn
buried in the rain.
…
Now for Sojourn proper
Sojourn
Canterbury leaned against the bridgerail. He was thin and wore an oversized puffer-jacket. He looked out through the luminous Veil’s weatherworn bars. Dimly lighting the puddled roads the cars shuddered over. Across the road trees stood limbless in corn snow and paling against the city horizon.
How many have leapt, dost thee think? Nay, thou dost not. Am I to bet this fence wire hinders such folk, for a poor gambler am I to lose yestern pot? I shan’t feel kinship so butterfly enough to leap when but a larva. Still-
A train along the understructure rumbled into the far-off when Canterbury straightened himself.
Nay, yestern‘s words which dogged thee in time shall hound us all. Yestern all the same. Yestern. Today, a difference hardly. Yestern will be on the morrow, I bet on that.
Canterbury waited for Coyote to oppose him.
Coffee? Have a bean no longer in those mouth-gums to partake?
They walked across Prince Edward Viaduct, Coyote bowlegged and his arms out to steady his rickety march. A boy no less than seven in a red coat and he looked square-shaped, jerking on the cord Canterbury had wound around him. He crouched at the sidewalk’s curb. Hands bowl-like into a puddle. They came away and Mold had bloomed across, dark water flowing through his fingers as he turned to hold them up at Canterbury.
What hast thou here? Midwife, aye, filth of a kindred’s quality. Lay the still born away. Canterbury was towing Coyote forward.
Along the puddled sidewalk a light pole had been reflected, lengthening underfoot of passersby. They heaved wet-eyed and huddled under the umbrellas and heads cupped between their shoulderblades, or chins pointed out.
Beasts, beasts around us. Nay, how art thou not when they surround us. Thou art a beast, dear Coyote, with thine words hounding me. Must I, must I explain it all to you? What art thou? See how mine words cut deep? What art thou?
Canterbury’s tongue lashed at Coyote who was goose-eyed dumbly staring at the road.
How am I? Nay, thine answer, makes meek of the mighty. Thou will not see yestern if thine words cannot vegetate. He heaved Coyote onward.
Some time later they came upon a park where they sat on a bench, bowed branches of an oak slatting the bleak sky above. Canterbury sat on the edge of Coyote’s leg.
Here in nature’s cradle, you are like a cushion, Coyote. Big, red, comfy. If always thou were like this I’d look forward to yestern the morrow.
Women across the snowed over gardens , limp and twisted, their fingers beetle-like among the dirt. Seeds sown and children came up behind them and dug the seeds out and ate them. The women had not noticed. Over the city ladders of smog climbing and men sad-eyed in overalls walked toward them.
Hast thou mother of herbs yet produced yet? Well, did thou bury thy toes an inch beside them? On hands thy toes, I mean. Thine arms cannot be clock-like to hurry along the seasons, I fear. If meant to be, it would have. Canterbury fidgeted against Coyote’s thigh. This is not much fun when you don’t talk. Always so talkative, but without that coffee you’re dumber than a stump.
Coyote went to get up.
Something is taking its course, oh how it happens thusly. Canterbury was glad-eyed steering Coyote onto the sidewalk where they continued on.
They walked into a sidewalk shed with people in claggy coveralls who Canterbury brushed against. He drew back, his shoulders kept tight together as he and Coyote went. Teens with their heads against the scaffolding peered over and smoked. Along the sidewalk a line had been formed and risked spilling into the bike lanes. People pushed through the lineup to the sound of jeers from those thinking someone had cut the line.
O the hindrance of labourers, Coyote. Canterburys stopped, suddenly scooping Coyote into his arms. By your leave, sir.
A man turned, baldheaded, wearing shirt strained by his pot-belly.
Wherefore this line? Canterbury shifted Coyote under his arm.
New coffee house, foreign.
Verily, even without a compass or a clarity’s path we arrive after our quaint respite. The wind at the sail’s rear, eagerness ample and full, that mighty thing which grapples our soul.
A secret promotion is supposedly going on right now, for their soft opening The man’s eyes slowly turned outward. For a discount if you give this secret word as your name.
A word undisclosed? Riddles. Unkind. Those foolish games, I have not the time for. But if thou art a sphinx for fear that thee spit the truth. Disclose these secrets, for no time should be spent on games. Canterbury said, mirthfully.
My guess is it’s something like fecund, just uncommon enough people won’t say it in casual conversation, and it references the fertile ground the blend grows on. The man stopped abruptly, eyes straining out and he shouldered through, walking down the shed. They watched him, a small shape burning incandescent yellow in the lampglow before he disappeared.
Meagre is the incentive, but a Janus-faced mask of humour abounds. How quaint, Aye Coyote? Yet, our goal remains single faced.
They stood silent. Coyote blankly listening to puddles splashing.
Canterbury moved forward. A tableau shifted against the dust-guazed windows. He tried to peer around to see but too many people blocked his view. Muffled sounds and orders called out while they advanced. Inside the shop millwrights shuffled behind the counter, two for every station except the cash register.
Next. The cashier said, voice muffled
The Cashier was wearing a welder’s mask and a tousled head adorning it. Canterbury held up Coyote, bid the nice… lady? How her services may aid.
Coyote didn’t speak.
Abate doth the wagging tongue, Canterbury said. Tis’ too much proved that behind naked pink doors yestern dies. The door thou art to a seed of coffee, so pluck thy fruit from its dreamy thoughts so thou mayst fashion a macchiato one peppermint and five more caramel. What dost thou need, knave? Marry, indeed. Prithee, bring two more thimblefuls of espresso.
Is that all? The cashier’s pleated neck pinched against the mask when she looked down the screen.
Verily.
Your total is eleven dollars
What pride this place must display, for coffee at once three-score the amount since last I went for one. A highwayman thou art, and I cannot abide this toll to cross the caffeinated road.
Sir, But—
A trivial matter to trouble the mind’s eye, when the greater bounty of my dearest’s joys be reaped as a result.
Canterbury withdrew a fistful of loonies and toonies from a pocket, they clinked onto the counter. May its abundance bring thee mammon‘s calmness, likewise. He smiled.
The name for the order, sir?
My memory withers. Something it had to do with, nay, that sounds improper, Canterbury thought for a moment. Nay, Coyote, thy goose feathered coat shows clearly. My name thou’st replaced with murkiness. Nay, speak no more. Thou maketh me a fool, for I am Canterbury. Put down that as my name. C-a-n-t-e-r-b-u-r-y.
They went toward the serving counter.
Coyote, be a dear and find us somewhere to sit while I get your coffee.
Coyote made no move to leave.
How about over there? Canterbury pointed to a small table by the window. Still you remain despite having a destination? What a turkey you are.
Canterbury gripped the cord and dragged Coyote to the table, setting him in the seat. He returned to wait for the coffee.
Steaming milk and roasting bean aromas came over him. Coffee hissing from dispensers. After it finished a millwright took it and sipped it. He shook his head and wiped his hand on the black oil-stiffened apron. They spoke for a moment, lips moving soundless under the harpie-throated appliances. One of them disappeared into the back for a moment. He returned in a milk stained chasuble with a greasy cord around his wrist and holding a bean-shaped censor. Tiny apertures spewing fragrant steam he swung at the coffee brewer. The other took a book from a rack behind the machine and opened it, the dogeared pages turning dryly. From the clausible he took out a small jar, kissing it before he unscrewed the top, its contents pouring out. He anointed the machine. Every worker stopped to watch the process. Faint whispers from customers flitting around Canterbury. When they had finished another cup was brewed and the worker nodded his approval before it went to be prepped further and served to Canterbury.
Often a spectacle thou dost make of this occurrence?
what, that? The worker pointed at where the scene took place.
Aye. Canterbury pulled the coffee towards him.
Sometimes.
Varied vocations require the soul in varied shapes.
Only senior staff are allowed to carry it out, but we’re given an opportunity on weekdays when the soil is most fecund, you know? Then the soul is planted.
Canterbury nodding absentmindedly took the coffee over to the table. He pulled his seat close to Coyote so he could practically sit on him.
How Comfiness abounds upon you alludes me still. Couched Coyote, you are, escapes me these words do. The lid off and Canterbury blew on the coffee.
First thou insists that is my name, now thou claimest it for thine own? Frayed minds most surely, but also a pitiful ambition at humour thou failest with spectacular fashions. No more do I wish to hear of this word again. Thou hast had thine laughs, but cease it now lest thy virtue go as hot wax.
Coyote took the coffee and didn’t respond. They sat silently and Canterbury watched customers stand in line or sit, some drinking as they loitered around the art-deco on the walls. Art of any kind curdled Canterbury’s soul like milk, still he refused and rose moving to leave and took up the cord, but stopped and stared at the door.
Through here we entered from? Nay, these doors jumbled, their portals into unknown places. Yoke my brain with riddles, how scandalous these brewers who make my woes plentiful. I must be gone
He pulled Coyote who firmly held the cup until Coyote stood at the curb in a half-hearted attempt to hail a cab. But none stopped. Canterbury turned back toward him in a wide-armed gesture of a merrymaker
Our presence need not furnish any cab. What of our feet? Steadfast things since time’s outset they have served us royally as any great servant. Let our minds not slip the thought, for the heaviest loads these great things bare into yestern the morrow they will. Now thou drink retreat those awful Os thy mouth makes.
He watched Coyote drink, the coat making his body look large and smooth like the body of an obese newborn. Dull city lamps haloing the coffee cup he had tipped back.
Without a word they resumed on the road with Canterbury pulling Coyote behind like he was leading a horse. Into midday they walked. They stopped by the cathedral step where naked leanhipped women worked a printing press. A woman rolled the ink over the printing plates, stomachs bespeckled black when they came away crouching at the step and the press came down. Another woman pulled the lever and held it. After a moment they unfastened the press and withdrew a poster, admiring with squinted looks the work and set it on a stack beside two other women who leaned back to see over their bellies while they were tatting their pubic hair. The nude woman had taken the stack and walked the street handing out the posters to anyone passing by.
Here you go, sir. She reached one out at Canterbury
Aye, but is the mistress not diminished this cruelest day?
We get by. If it does they allow us into the church so long as congregants don’t see.
O the watcher’s folly is a fiery thing, but ladies like yourselves may be warmed by its scrutiny. Indeed. Pray tell the contents of this flimsy signboard.
An art gallery just opened in the edge of the city, by this farm. You can’t miss it.
The woundless artist has his harlots plague these parching streets with poisonings I beseech thee, pray tell the hag-ode those on the step are employed in.
They do it for maternal luck and so new days come without bad luck.
Aghast, an awful thing this morrow has claimed. This cannot come to pass, Coyote. We must go to this gallery so yestern the morrow occurs happily.
Canterbury and Coyote made for the crosswalk. With an unbalanced gait Canterbury pulled at Coyote who toppled over, skidding along the concrete and stopped near the bus stop. A small ramshackle box of glass leaning in the wind. Rammed boxes dissolved into pastes the pavement gaps were grouted in. On the bench sat a man in a pinned up shirt and an additional waxy torso and head bulged from his stomach, its eyes dreamily rolling while the man beat it on the head.
Both Canterbury and Coyote sat on the bench.
Wedded brotherhood? Canterbury said, shifting as Coyote reclined back.
Why’s it matter to you? The man’s fist paused over the sleeping figure’s head.
I would have you know this is Coyote, and I am Canterbury. What Shall I call thee?
I’ve no name. But this one here is Jacob The man said.
The name, but a rung higher than my own— dost thou agree, Coyote?
Coyote didn’t respond. He watched the cars pass by.
What is your name?
I don’t have one. Jacob got one since he always sleeps and so many people at the grain silos needed something to call him by so he’d wake up. The issue now is that calling for him doesn’t work. And he needs to wake up, that fool. He has the directions to get us home.
Thou cannot read the map? Canterbury said
I don’t divinate. His fist weakly smacking against Jacob’s head.
Certainly, a starfish thou art to the sky. Dost thou sleep?
No. Not since I was a boy.
Perhaps thou shouldst.
The man didn’t reply. The bus arrived. Canterbury and Coyote boarded and when it took off Canterbury watched the man feebly hit his brother again. He did not wake.
Wakefulness is wasteful. Hast thou woken yet, Coyote? True, better when we aren’t in such straits. What then when dost thou? Thou will let me know, but another thou wouldst be, a word then to safeguard so we know each other.
Canterbury rubbed his chinwhiskers and looked out the window again. He turned back to Coyote’s suggestion. Why dost thou keep saying that when it isn’t my name? No. Thou hast had your fill of jokes and now gorge thyself, thou art a slug. Thou art a caterpillar, begone. No I don’t want to hear it, I’ll know it’s thee by how thou mistake me for someone else. Begone from me before I lash thee.
Coyote had not moved but Canterbury made no move to strike him. They stayed silent, listening to the creaking bus pulled across the road. Dust dry and swirling over stands of hemlock. Windblown Shadows of branches banding the roadway. Passengers opened the windows to smoke, some breathing deep the saw-dust smelling air that washed over the cabin when the trees opened into a lumber yard. Lumber under a leanto of a tarp, the sounds of whirring saws coming faintly off beyond them.
After another hour the bus stopped in front of a large concrete pillbox. It had farmhouse windows, a cobbled pavement of plastic stones leading to double doors inlaid with bronze. People were lining up outside. Rows of five slowly filtering in with Canterbury and Coyote close behind them.
Visitors wandered about, they looked muzzle-eyed at the artwork. Each glance a shot and an unseen hole through a painting. Canterbury kept his head down. He refused to kill any art. But Coyote looked on, his awe magnified in the glassy looks of the crowds. Their joys rising in a babble.
Avert thy gaze, dearest. Canterbury threaded the crowds while they’re praise boomed like mortar shells. So deafening Canterbury screwed up his eyes and he faintly made out the shapes of the hanging art, still he refused to look. He didn’t want to see so many bleeding frames hung on the walls. The pale shape of a child he drew closer. The thing cried. Linseed tears soaked into his shirt and he hushed and squeezed it tighter, cradling it as to shield its eyes from the walls and he rose, the child’s face a stone mask when Canterbury brought it over to the coatracks. When he looked at the baby again it had become a couch cushion. It smelled of turpentine
How…?
Excuse me, sir? A man pulled away from the crowds, Are you alright?
Certainly. Canterbury cleared his throat. By surprise these works of art had ensnared me. But, the artist, is he here? Pray you, let me speak with this artist
He isn’t here. The man said
Where then?
In the cave of course. Outside. But you’ll have to swim some to see him.
The man disappeared into the crowds of admirers. Outside Coyote walked ahead in a show of the eager adventurer. Fields of corn around them, huskcoloured bayonets. The broken moon above. The sounds of crickets. Canterbury and Coyote walked this darkness, a tableau dimly lit from the moonlight. They stopped at the cave’s mouth. It was a cragged slit with beetle husks at the entrance and rows of ants. For a moment they hesitated then entered, Canterbury leading. He held Coyote’s hand as they wriggled through, its jagged edges rough against them until the narrow passage opened around a body of water. Canterbury crouched in the dark, a hand reached over the dark pool which seemingly recoiled from his touch. He turned back to Coyote and smiled and grabbed his arm and plunged both of them into the depths, pulling Coyote through the waters and he thrashed in resistance. Cold and brittle. Into narrow passages they swam in and over old flotsam of distant memories. Thoughts of awareness bursting like a bubble. On the surface Canterbury saw an orange glow and surfaced into a cave. A lantern on a thin spruce branch. Canterbury crawled from the water weakly pulling up a stiff-backed couch cushion. It lay there in a flickering patch of dark from the lantern. Half way up the spruce a man hung bald and bloated and in thinworn rags, eyes dimly staring at the pool and the lantern light briefly made melonstripes along his rib bones.
Could thou have known all along? Canterbury bent over the couch cushion. He was trembling, the lantern glow making him look brockle-faced.
It is a conception, the hanged man stirred. A womb wet with the redness of mankind. A redness of the mind all dreams multiply from.
Be quiet, you. Canterbury spat.
It has occurred.
When didst you paint this?
I cannot recall.
Yestern’s death knell, you are to be left the blame.
Yes.
The morrow of painted soles, see the wretched trail thou hast sowed. With seed and progress-machines the heart hast polluted, how the mockery of your world works itself lifeless, bloodied, its soul ebbing. Yet how may I go on when thou dealt a fatal blow upon Yestern’s Majesty? Your seed, your cancer-seed is a coward’s essence. My comforts thou hast struck dead and made plentiful of my sorrows. Yestern the morrow, itself couched in the stilled self, its dream fleeting, anchored comfort no longer to the sweetest cur. Thou art a butterfly, wretched, the foulness of thy full wings taunt me. Relinquish what hast been stolen. Give it back, fiend. Give it back.
Yes.
When?
Go birth it yourself
The hanged man’s bones creaked, pointing toward a tunnel. Canterbury was dragging the cushion over to the roots like a bloodied offering then plodded through the tunnel. It slopped upward and he emerged from a sink. Damp and mudblack through the night he walked. The moon hidden away, yet the stars, fat and spiralled, glared directly beneath him. Finally he stopped in a trainyard. Road ties jutting from the earth and its wood rotted. Across the tracks rail cars were overturned, spray paint tags along their flanks by cinderblocks and broken glass, crunching underfoot when Canterbury clambered up to its doors. He wrenched them open and climbed inside. The car was dark. Beside the doorway a lantern sat and the flies walked it‘s mouth and he lit it. The shadows shuddering away into the corners. His eyes coalblown. The waterlogged couch in the corner sat with its left cushion missing. He held the lantern to his cheek as he approached but kept it at a distance so as little light could fall on its form.
I am arrived home.
He waited for a response. All he heard were lamp-cracklings.
One more I crave haste of. Misplaced the last I seem to have.
Maternity bloated the couch, its seams threadworn and sopping. He set the lantern down and approached slowly, his arms up as he looked on like a Shepard aiding a birth.
You see, mother, For a stroll we desired, but the morrow had seized him for a hubris I dare not know the beginnings of. In the dead of night, my yestern comforts stolen. But so many comforts you covet. Spare one, I beseech thee with the word of Yestern’s bliss. I need but one more delivered unto me. Please. Spare one. Please.
He leaned over the Bridgerail. Shrodinger‘s river was shaded, but he could not see. He looked on at the beetcoloured new born. Larval and bloodslimmed in the sludgy snow. A bolster seemingly tossing around between his legs. He bent over it, bringing it up to his chest and looked admiringly upon the thing which to him looked like a skinned beaver.
What think thee, Coyote, is thy thirst for coffee great?
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