TOM PRIME
The Rusty Toque | Issue 13 | Poetry | November 30, 2017
RevelationsIt was May, and I was sick of Toronto. I was living in a squat with some friends. Since the winter had ended, I decided to hitchhike to Algonquin park and go camping. I packed up my torn blue Value Village hitchhiker’s backpack and hit the road. I was trying to not smoke pot for three weeks, so I had no weed, but I brought a plastic container full of Peter Jackson tobacco and a mickey of vodka. My backpack was full of stolen food (about three days worth)—I cooked with a little propane stove. By the time I got there, it was late, so I drank a bit, smoked a cigarette, and fell asleep on the beach. In the morning, I stole an aluminum boat—rowed across to somebody’s cottage. I read Revelations for the bizarre imagery and got bit by horseflies. I was alone, and it felt good. Nobody to please, nobody to prove myself to. It rained the second night before I left, so I sat inside my stupid child’s tent and shivered in my sleeping bag, while the rain leaked through. In the morning, I found that all my matches had been destroyed, so I forced open the window of the cottage and climbed inside. There was a woman with a dog’s head staring at me; she had on a thick see-through shawl with white elephant patches embroidered onto it. That night I couldn’t sleep. At about three or four in the morning, I packed up my sleeping bag and tent—rowed away from the island. The night was quiet—the sky was scintillating green, due to apoplectic solar winds. All I could hear was my paddle, dipping in and out of the water, and a loon calling to nothing. The mother-shadow of trees, the old light of vibrating stars. Working ClassI died a few years ago since then, I’ve been smoking cheaper cigarettes I like to imagine that I’m still alive I can smoke, get drunk, and do things living people do the other ghosts think I’m strange they busy themselves bothering people turning on lights, pulling open kitchen cabinets some try to talk to me they think I’ll care about their trivial complaints their many disappointments Golden Appleswhen the birds flew northward and the snow became raindrops and the hills grew green gowns of grass we hitched on an highway to valleys of cacti where scorpions haunted a fog of dust—we picked golden apples and smoked strong pot the tent and all our things washed away—all our shit pulled underneath the gardener- snake stream—quivering lips slept in a cheap hotel the bed, a foreign thing the mid-September air under our starving skins my cigarette smoke and pawnshop fur-coat kept me picking farmers’ fruitage. soon it was all rotten or sold the birds flew southward my parents got divorced we travelled through wet snow waited outside McDonald’s-- for spare change, plastic pancakes, and the dead Thunder Bay sun if I loved you, it was then. your pea-green coat and fucked up hair—staring out nowhere your cold October hands |
TOM PRIME’S poems have been published in Vallum, Ditch, Carousel, and the Northern Testicle. His first chapbook was recently published by Proper Tales Press. He is attending the University of Victoria's MFA program.
