Roland Pemberton presents "Critical Mass" to City Council
Critical MassPresented to City Council
October 14, 2009
ONE
The long and winding road
That skirts the river valley
Indicates a message to me
That though the people
Pray they can ride
It may never truly be free
That love and hate
Divide a narrow straight
'cross which I make my way
The path that I know
I rarely go
Teleport the wooded highway
I was reared in the urban
By the street with the bourbon
And my learning curve was steep
Critical mass
Should not be a blast
It depends on where you sleep
I bashed a hood
In Bonnie Doon
You know he had it coming t' him
No signal and
City chimes
He cut me off at dinner time
He caterwauled,
"Identity crisis!"
He must not know it's in my license
To be three
For the price of one
Is to star in the game of violence
TWO
Get out of my way
What else can I say?
Intelligent malign works the energy mines
The spoils on the off-week
The path is off-beat
The kicks we provide and the kicks that I find
The city star
Did you know how far
You can go with hundreds of dragging horses?
Indentured slavery
In the name of chicanery
We reside above the forces
He thinks he's a car
But he's surely not
Do they not have a place for this kind of thing?
Do they not see
It's unnecessary
The blockages and the lines they bring
The painted corners
And sustained borders
For the wheel bladers and the skateboarders
The sign holders
In front of your gate
Are among your spoked, aligned soldiers
Do they know
Whose city it is?
I need it to pick up my kids
To put production
In my fridge
With no regard for our missing ridge
THREE
It's called sidewalk, not sidebike!
What kind of community can't get home right?
And with my teeth jutting
My boot heels cutting
I march towards Normandy and look how I'm pointing!
I would never admit
The extent of my tumult
Outside of the classic route of the Catholics
Flower bedfellows
I splice blue and yellow
For the New Velodromantics
I stop as Disney
I cautionary tale
I world of wonder in the jaws of life
I look he in the eyes
So one don't forget
We are sometimes homologous
The thrush is instant and circumspect
Rough, crashing, absolute in its rend
Road warriors embrace as friend
And all because three came to an end
On gravel in the West End
By the high school of my first girlfriend
In the city where the seasons don't begin
Apart from the places with the hands to lend
In the end
We all dissipate
Never regenerate
Wondering if we could make it
To work on time
Dirt City (New Strathcona)
Written for Alberta Arts Day
September 19th, 2009
Truculent, rough and beyond compare, the babes of their youth contain fighting stock
Lovers rock, but at what cost, when black magnets patrol the square
Trachea spate on man-made lakes, developers that can't create
Creaking pain incomparable, his paramour devours the loft
Colours mock the Oil City Roadhouse, cubic zirconium drifts off the cloth
Boring holes in every way, exposing irrespective decay
Espousing the city's center, I won't be around for the winter
Cold wars and cold sores, candy canes and candid claims
Altered snow at the feet of a soldier, the octagon unremitting
Lions loose on ruined suits that bare the brunt of the working class
City Market Apartments punctured, frothing incursions
Did you ask why he's holding a pan? Every beast has a different version
Arrows at the castle of the young loyal local royals
You are to know you should never invite them in
A bouncing head tells the tale of muscle silence
While overseers veer and complain of night blindness
Transient wagons wheel their interest to the next place
A fortuitous fortress for the carbon-covered face
There's changeover, for those over the road
In awe of the Empress's new clothes
Message arose, they turn to blows
Because a saloon will always be a saloon
But what of the trucks?
The sound of living in and around Truck Town
Tall trucks for truck brawls, the trucks have truck balls
Keep on trucking until the trucks get called
To tow refuse from the early numbered meetings
Jack in the box presence for swords of the season
We speak using Northern greetings, in our best
At the behest of the Western cliques
The white on the paint on the bricks, shell tricks
New Strathcona in dancehall ghettos
If it were any different, it wouldn't matter at all
In dirt city, mufflers betray the arthouse, acid rain as turpentine!
In dirt city, the hobo king sunbathes at the Mission!
In dirt city, haired artists donnybrook, position as jockey, nothing of the sort!
In dirt city, black hole beds and unrequited typicals pillory the old romantics!
In dirt city, the clay is everyday, plump controllers of the common ground!
In dirt city, the rovers plug the flesh artists, charged up on overdrive!
In dirt city, the coins or else, converge against health!
In dirt city, the rolling green in our greatest graces!
In dirt city, the leafy concrete trampled by new plastics and the animal in the building!
In dirt city, integers remain on the transparent slips, but never escaping the dreaded dash!
In dirt city, there's Smokey & Gravy & Whitey & Dietzche & Fish & Wolfskin & Snarf
& Kazmega & Vis-a-vis & a number to the power of a different number!
In dirt city, with feeling! With emphasis! With gusto! With chutzpah! With some guts!
In dirt city, you can see yourself!
I Am A Waiter
Written for opening of the Armoury Youth Centre
September 25th, 2009
There is no clock unless you wear one
The stores they have that can repair them
Appear with fear too far away from
The quilted place you make your mates come
The race is made with straight faces
Along the erstwhile grey days since
You're doing all to stay awake
So you wait, I wait, we wait
I am a waiter but I am not dumb
Do not count the seconds aloud
I am a waiter with rules of thumb
Stitches insisting that they are proud
Lucky numbers affixed to the cross
Walk the crashing wave divider
Some of them got tired of waiting
I found out through my service provider
No code kids in elephant skins
Cave markings and spectral suitcase
I cannot hit them where they live
They are sockless and bootlegged
Post-everything, they post no bills
Cold pills hazy, you're driving me crazy
Remaking Driving Miss Daisy
Rosa Parks by the wire sparks
Now by choice, polluting noise
They choose, now the boys on the bus lose
Private vehicles on private people
Walk across the bridge to get to where you live
It does not run after 1
What if we do?
Our crews cut in the brass of judges
And preserved in plaster smudges
Ring the bell and leave your shell
Your chariot awaits, I wait, she waits
Fatalism by mechanism
Rail fail
Bus rush
Cataclysmic with battle instinct
Timing is the bane, notary is the blame
The blue is river, the yellow is wheat and the white absent in night
Converging on the coverage arranged in plain sight
Hiding in the shelter where everything's alright
You can sleep there but they don't turn out the lights
Monks on booze, waiting for the headlights
Of the often whispered but never glimpsed no. 57
Breath holding and withholding fares from perceived heavy types
We wait, we wait, we fight
I am a waiter with no tables
And teachers that paper the old fables
The machines can run without the cables
And take us early beyond the stables
Age is in the feathered features
The creatures of the sung song
Startled at my stop in wrong
So you wait, he waits, I waited too long
Valley Girls
A river runs through it, it's not what you think
Mouth to mouth, the big drink you shouldn't drink
I was always told that we could see straight forever
Distance is a relative pursuit
You'd think I'd never been anywhere
You spilled pudding on my proofs
Shutter speed for late bloomers
Radio rave, a page full of trades
Easy sells and power plays
Lucky for life and letting you know it
Empty bottles, fulfilled promises
Love made, bank deposits
Prayed among the flowered chemists
Voyeurs, these banks hold interest
We come from a long line
Our tribe adheres the natural order
Teepees are camcorders
Relay the message in double-time
Existential bliss instance
Bicycle helmets, party crashers
Conflict with the miniature masters
Unmasked, never asked under the rafters
This is our court, let us hold it
Soldiered on for a third golden
Intelligent design in fashion mines
Give me something to look at
Our tall progeny may relocate
but their souls will never leave this place
Permission slips to whiskeyed alleys
My heart belongs to the girls in the valley
Water, Alberta
They don't love you
They only want your water
Element unapparent
in the days of your fathers
They don't love you
They only want your water
They think it's here
but it's probably not
Nautical miles from the queen mother
She still lives in our fountains
Hand in hand with sister cities
Reconsider the mountains
The key to being landlocked
Black mist and ham hocks
Self-actualized permission
for the transfer of land plots
Hyper colour, tonight and abroad
For thee, I stand on guard
You are a believer
And why shouldn't you be?
Painters verse the strokes
How are we any different?
Perception alive
in the days of old
I hold the shield
The grains are my hair
But I must not believe it
if the image isn't there
The fear is here,
the same as before
How can they take that
which only lives in a store?
Brita committers
With sludge love buzz
It's not a swamp
but it's hot and it's hot
Adjacent to a rainforest
Flooding through the dome for the tourists
Diminishing returns, live and learn
Burn, baby, burn
They don't love you
They only want your water
Show us the things
that you're made of
They don't love you
They only want your water
Tears are lacking
the trade value
Windy Cities
It ain't safe no more
Wind as weapon
Shelter helter skelter
Portable homes get extended as such
Plague age in munificence
Can't buy out with frankincense
Allocate your patronage
to someone who actually cares
Don't want to get blown away
Windy cities with no exclusivity
Brackets break the lucidity
I only remember the dreams where I die
History repeating
fierce feeling
Fear is fleeting
unless it's in your yard
Traitor page and tarot cards
I'm a bird collector
Hanging among
the mine canaries
Whyte Ave. blackouts
Bunker brothers
Hustle unlimited
for public constituents
Black and white and red all over
Town crier, hanging from phone wires
Pastiche priest with words in his teeth
Wind as a weapon is a modern belief
Wind in reeds and windy reading
Shop signs are fallen hurdles
I jump over the traffic circles
Communal weekend raindance meetings
Heat rises, so do bridges
Guess how and guess why
Sometimes the wind has a voice
And it isn't saying something nice
Open door policies
through the window or door price
Dance club love against gusty whispers
Black Fridays happen again and again
