West Coast Noir

for Richard Naster     c. 1983

Vancouver, used bookstores,
an art-house cinema or two nearby
and the cheap diners.
Rainy winters the crime.

Some facts emerged, in situ.
When I arrived, my room was empty save
for a few shadows
that moved, as I arrived.

It seemed all right, to live
with a change of clothing and a typewriter,
blackening pages
and failing to, when young.

At the Railway Club, where the toy
electric train scooted the long louche bar,
outnumbered, we drank
to the White Goddess. With her,

I questioned if dream was dream.
In her boudoir I crapped in a pot that turned
into a birdcage.
The parrot appeared ok,

and flew off, like art,
wayward, denuded of its schemes. Those days
spent gathering
evidence, at the scene!