Grappling the ragged ends of a thicket with riggings shredded by heavy wind and storm, the arboreal sloop ascends to the highest mast; a bush re-taken, the Crow's, Nest reconnointered.

Page 69 THE CAMERA CAGE As a child, all common sense decreed pirates wore dear teeth -- enamel white, with tusks to rout an elephant (the result from eating carrot sticks, I was told) -- not a solitary doubt clutched my mind ivory mingled naturally with black cord and sash in the brain's Bluebearded eye.

Then, it was so matter of fact like taking sausage to bed, saying a proper good night for the wisdom of the mother-provider was similar to a pirate chief.

The let-down came in advanced picture book form, childhood crisis accelerated on seeing Kidd brain a member of his l.u.s.ty crew but the upstart taking the beating was toothless and sore no arcanely romantic rake at all, more like a strange woman in the park with whom no one dared to speak.

Page 70 FENCE LINE

That Captain Kidd scribbling of rock in the fields yellowed bristle of pages back of a farm where piratical breaking of land knocks clean holes in the soil, gypsy dancers vernal growth before a spy-gla.s.s hour moon.

And black print smudged on a thumb, a child's glossary of tales thick with terror before the faceless wretch crawls for grog, his peg-leg in step with one part of my brain Old Phew hardly any Smee from Peter Pan but the holocaust -- the raven in the tree eyeing the baby Treasure Island, that fledgling reason butchering both nostrils at the skunk cabbage whose nectar is the prize of cemeteries & wild reunion of the bees.

Page 71 ADVERSARIES

He held his hands like plastic -- his vestments the finer calling of his trade, vocation as modern strummer of Nature's laws Engineer in brief -- wine gla.s.s in hand bestowing the more salient points of mawkish disbelief with cigarette to numb the spine.

The Reverend looked down on fire, caught papryus smoke in the bellows of his chest, made laundry of the Plumber's intellect -- tore savage parchment from the soft cheesecutter's contemporary breath.

Page 72 BARGAINING UNIT

The man about to become a sparrow is shouting his head off wearing green trousers with red eyes framing mustier tweed, he lambasts the lad for not conducting his person properly in showing up for work in a white shirt.

The fact the future labour requires only lifting boxes to a shed is a fine point about as important as the man himself who has transformed himself into that sparrow where several would not span the breadth of a bigger man's hand or four could be had in the Biblical sense for less than a penny.

Page 73 PALAIS ROYALE

The night cold as nuggets, dark as acorn, against your chest; snow falling like abandoned echoes releasing energy into the spygla.s.s, umbrella moon.

A solitary figure trapping hapless sparrows not in a net but with his footprints doubling as dungeons against the sun -- here & there rusting eavestroughs ballooning into avenging shadows their harpsichord voices spun on dreams d.i.c.k Whittington once used to buy a cat.

And once Tom Thumb Upstaged Peter Pan by appearing under a petunia but this is not likely to happen soon.

The dawn, forlorn & grey, is a court m.u.f.fin's handkerchief waved at a sailor far out at sea.

Page 74 ALCATRAZ

White ibis/blue crane, the arch of wings in full sail over leafy barques a wise stork scanning water like the Disney character, conductor on his train with eye-gla.s.ses & stop watch.

Sift of wind, unseen hand exploring the pond the stork ungainly on a single leg the bird-man Jolly Roger a pirate burrowing in the muck add skull and cross bones upending frightened fingerlings the snout of the bandit a rifle shot away creasing the shallows.

Page 75 WHEN LABOURING TO BREAK

Perhaps one is in prison -- fidgeting as time draws to a close -- a sc.r.a.p of house tunic between the fingers or when labouring to break cuticles on swollen fingers pressing both hands against ears that refuse to hear the stop sound of rushing blood.

Then again, in the last hour before end time, before dawn's arrival and floodlit sky finds you -- knuckles clasping bars, pitiless bayonet-like with eyes swishing truncheons at all the getaway air your lungs will never take; wheezing in growing fear to the sound of footsteps, clank of keys and gallow's humour as they prepare to Skuttle your short life, wall up clouds of their own pestilence nakedly mask each firing squad gathering for its fighting chance.

page 76 THIS WAY TO THE SIXTIES: JOHN LENNON'S DEATH FIVE YEARS AFTER

It was a red letter day and all within a decade, the sixties.

Psychadelic and all because the Electric Circus opened up Walking Yonge Street in the December cold, aging "hippies", the word itself a joke, reminisced:

National Guardsmen, for one, doing post-mortems on their rifle b.u.t.ts, record covers carrying the first life- sized zippers and mashed up rubber dolls; Cher Bono getting up nerve and a career to name her child Chast.i.ty but walking off with a card.

By the end of the decade they were asking questions.

We had landed on the moon per schedule but who would have believed in the efficacy of Rock or the efficency of napham before Vietnam? Frosted hair.

Body paint. The sixties produced a lot of it. With one bullet, the Beatles, the secular saviours, were breaking up. Before they had finished reuniting the world. Before the history of music could be written.

Before John Lennon, did we dare trust ourselves, World leaders, gurus?

That was the meaning of the a.s.sa.s.sination.

Page 77 History won't budge an inch for neophytes, The Clockwork Orange was instructive but didn't go far enough. Frodo wouldn't live in Yorkville today if given a chance.

Now for the most poignant mental lapse of the Candle carriers, mourners and mock biers with frozen flowers. Simply the reminder half the population didn't share his vision. Veterans grumbled. The press paid more attention to this solitary event than Armistice Day. Schoolchildren t.i.ttered. What was that? The so-called generation gap seemed poised on that comment. Then John's comment the Beatles were more popular than Jesus Christ Donovan didn't survive tunes like Epistle to Dippy.

Lennon won't survive the Elvis Beatle syndrome.

The lights are going out on the sixties, The eighties are austere.

Cherry c.o.kes are the memory of a laugh.

The Purple Onion only causes perplexion like Charlie Brown's Great Pumpkin.

Forget about words like "catalyst".

Lennon was the conflageration.

Graffiti after him has renewed licence.

Page 78 POGROM

There is an unhurried resemblance to pain, here, this Fiddler on the Roof commodity, potables, fine oaken chest for one and furs; but wait, the Czarist police are busting up the place -- a program is having its desired effect on our emotions, the wine cellar smashed as tears are falling like b.l.o.o.d.y heaps in the red snow, cuttersleds carting off the sundry feelings we've invested in, a relationship already staledated two years old.

Page 79 BRAGGADOCIO