Homage to David Holzman

A TV Diary

24/4/06

1215-1222 hrs


In black and white a man
looks at a family photo, wooden
church against a tearful

North Dakota Sky, a slightly
dwarfish granite
Helmcken addressing

from a cozy gothic
portico an empty corner
of our dozing capital

while the insistent
Liona Boydalike strums
Vivaldi for Pursesnatchers.

Sobbing with emotion
through the "Zapp" setting
of a friendly vocoder

a man in long extensions
addresses a young woman
in denim shorts

who sits on a sportscar
hood--everything is
murky bluegrey monochrome

except their yellow
shirts and the red
of the car, the hems & glottal

hesitations of the
simultaneous translator
are likewise the sound of thought,

something a vocoder
might seek to blur
much as Mike Harris--

nostalgically glimpsed
lying his ass off
at the Ipperwash Inquiry--might,

with the kind of quasi-medicated
brutality that can only be
aquired in a boyhood

marinated in cheap schoolyard
betrayal, seek
to blur adult emotion with

the sound of newspapers
flopping against a wet deck.
You're the kind of

girl that can see beyond
my poultry but still
fit into my world, not

the kind of a person that
would bring ____
to an anger-management

potluck in a community
already seething
with _______.

I'm a nervous wreck this
salad spinner is making
me a nervous wreck.