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POEMS
Poems by Richard Stevenson
"Some years ago, I had the disconcerting experience of recognizing a former student among the gallery of victims
thumbnails in the first true crime book on the Clifford Olson killings; wrote a sequence of six poems. Years later, I'm
piecing together a long poem weave of monologues, lyric/narrative pieces."
The Third Act
You're in your forties now.
It's getting harder to sustain
the drama in act two.
It's not just your gut
that's hanging over your belt;
the action's sagging too.
You have to bring on a new character,
offer a soliloquy or epiphany;
you can only complicate the plot so far
and keep the tension. Episodic
narrative has no dramatic arc,
and you'll have no audience.
It's time to change up. Time to
get the credit for the script
and fess up to being the bad guy.
Actors say it's harder to do comedy
than tragedy, and you know that
to be the truth. More febrile than feral,
your twenty-yard stare has no
more matinee idol sparkle or guile
than that of a very fat fox with hobo hat.
Your surreal cartoon has no
Grand Guignol horse in the piano
to drag out of the strings. No eyeball
to fly like the starship Enterprise
over the networks and into the path
of a razor blade. The gig is up.
You sell tickets to boomers in
a second-run house in the 'burbs.
Your disturbing nine-month run
is repertory now. Your collection
of memorabilia only appeals to old geeks
on the rubber chicken circuit. We have pigs.
Pigs that eat human beings! Pigs that
become pork chops. We have cannibals
with red dye two and prostitutes sludging their veins.
We can travel asshole to breakfast with
a camera. Can shoot polyps or parasites live.
Why would we want to lance your boil anymore?
Mrs. C's Dream
Were you reaching out, Terri Lyn?
Did you send a signal from beyond
the shallow peat bog of consciousness?
Is there something of significance
in the arms, legs akimbo image
that flashed in your mother's brain pan,
that she saw you sprawled on the ground
in a reverse posture to the one
they eventually found you in?
Was this God's way of saying heaven exists,
that your spirit lives there, or just
mere co-incidence? What straws of hope
do your family and friends cling to now,
when consciousness is a burning bush of
inflamed dendrites and chemical traffic?
What strange glyph is this? How can we
tell the dancer from the dance, victim
from victor on this broken urn of consciousness?
Did Keats have it right, or are we all
meat puppets at the end of a DNA string
uncoiling like the nebulae of frog spawn
in some bigger pond? Can these soft dikes
of my broken words hold any water back?
Whose fat finger will plug any of the holes?
“Your Constituent, The Big Bad Wolfe”
Gary Marcoux, “de Wabbit,”
a.k.a. The Big Bad Wolfe --
badass sexual predator par excellence.
Earned a cell in the “Penthouse,”
just like you. Might have
got away with the rape,
mutilation, and murder
of a nine-year old girl too,
but for your adept stoolie confessional.
You cadged drawings, gruesome details,
maps out of him in exchange
for a bogus alibi. Played Father Confessor,
and got your future M.O.,
dumping grounds, and, if lawyer
Robert Shantz is to be believed,
even your new depraved personality
from that sick fuck. Gathered it
all up and tied it with a bow
for the boys in blue, and got a
commendation for your pains; if not
a room with a view, at least the occasional
respite as they moved you from
one segregated cell to another, one
jailhouse to another, just to keep
you alive, though why is anybody’s guess.
A brief sojourn in General Population
might have saved tax payers a bundle.
Not that another inmate didn’t try –
and wouldn’t try again – to dispatch
your sorry ass with a shiv in the
Prince Albert pen. “A Public Service”
is how he, and countless other inmates,
viewed the attempt. And now you count
the scars like beads in some crazy
crabbed rosary. Revel in being the
lowest of coelenterates, the most
litigious paperhanger in the system.
Launch bogus suit after suit, for
the chance of a day in court,
a little fresh air now and again.
Even have journalists who would
interview you running errands. Such
a charming motherfucker! Did you get
your taste for kiddy porn from Marcoux too?
A Few Statistics
Thirty-two of fifty-three years in prison,
and in his short time on the street,
an average of one sexual offense,
seven property crimes a day,
possibly, a murder a month.
Cumulatively, that’s 1,200 sexual offenses,
nearly 10,000 property crimes,
perhaps more than 40 murders
our guy may have committed
during his time in the World.
Recidivist doesn’t begin to
paint the picture. Career criminal
would be a euphemism. Time bomb
would imply there was a period
he was wired tight and ticking.
“Dull to Normal IQ” the verdict
at seventeen on a first offense
B and E beef. Yet eighty to ninety
percent on Queen’s University
correspondence courses taken in stir.
Thirty-eight out of forty
on Hare’s sociopathic scale.
Our guy’s clearly no slacker,
is motivated to succeed
on his own perverse terms.
But succeed at what? Being
the most universally reviled
man in the slammer? The worst
Canadian sexual predator?
The most depraved, most hated?
For what? A shudder in the loins,
ten grand a body he can’t spend?
To stick it to the man, get
his rocks off inflicting pain
and interminable suffering on the parents?
A score card? Exactly! Beaten, as it
inevitably must be – by a
monster from the same neighbourhood,
no less. For the caress with death,
the sense of omniscient power killing affords?
He loves the hunt, clearly; prides himself
on his skill and ability to troll
the streets as a wheel. Square shoulders
with anyone, over burgers and beer
in his guise as contractor/ entrepreneur.
He’s got a good patter, a
great routine. Sorts his victims
as easily as the postman
sorts mail. Changes M.O.s,
jurisdictions, if not his signature.
Is proud of his heinous acts, and
delights in describing them in
glorious, gory detail. Imagines himself
an expert on serial murder, profiling
victimology, psychological assessment.
Not a monster, just an ordinary Joe
who won’t obey the rules; a guy
who prefers, chooses, to live by his own.
Clever if not intelligent. A step ahead
of the law. Proud to solve his own case.
Proud to be able to gloat anytime he chooses,
proud that a sentence would have been
impossible without his jailhouse confession.
Prouder still to own the details,
to never ever have to release certain facts.
Keeper of the keys. Igor and Frankstein’s monster both,
shambling on a leash, smirking for
the hurdy gurdy grind of jurisprudence
and truth. His truth. His possession.
His precious, abstract, lingering, languorous disease.
Biography
Richard Stevenson lives and teaches in Lethbridge, AB. Recent published works include Parrot With Tourette’s
(Black Moss Press, Palm Poets series, 2004), Riding on a Magpie Riff ( a memoir, Black Moss Press, Settlements
Series, 2006), Bye Bye Blackbird and The Emerald Hour (both forthcoming from Ekstasis Editions). In addition to
writing and teaching, he regularly reviews poetry and prose and occasionally performs with jazz/poetry troupes
Naked Ear and Sasquatch.