Spiders: The Ministry of Webs

I witnessed the hardiest crows in the system shattered by
immorality, trembling neurotic wreaks,
slogging themselves through welfare cheques at twilight
searching for a sturdy foundation,
fork-tongued politicians yearning for the popular vote
persuasion to sugary elixir in the cogs of time,
whose destitution and disorder and listless gaze and wired up
intaking in the psychological coldness of
sterile sanitoriums drifting from the hillside cottages
ruminating familial buzz,
who plead their hearts to social workers under the minister
of children and saw Draconian devils stumbling over
sacrificial child payouts abused,
who droned through alien homes with glazed soulless eyes
dreaming paradise and late-night horrors
among untrained figures of parenthood,
who were arrested from their homes for drugs &
disordering traumatic episodes on the screens of their
pupils,
who sheltered in brittle bedrooms in filth, shiver-
ing their backsides in soiled sheets and hearing
the bellows of the beast through hollow walls,
who got reprimanded in their child’s play returning from
Riverview with a patch of nicotine for Beckman House
who consumed childhoods in beastly domains or sipped wine
in psychosis’ corner, cracked or prostrated their corpses
between moon phases
with euphoria, with meds, with schizophrenic prophecies, booze
and rods and repeated bruisings,
intoxicating choking streams of undulating smoke and
flaming in my memory flowing inward into brain and lungs,
shrouding the emotions in a chameleonic world of change for
Tobacco treaties of hand-rollers, living room box TV show marathons,
caffeine agitation at the breakfast table, grocery store hauntings
of a mid-afternoon tyrannical temper tantrum, screaming and wailing
and fast-food sedations in the murmuring March rains in Maple Ridge,
 chicken nugget ravings and unsavoury spoiled spawn of biology,
who clung themselves to apron strings for the repeated begging
from Haney to amazing Brentwood with diner coupons till the sobs
of child and brother settled down gasping teary-eyed and misfortunate
impairment of mind never kind to the resilience of mother
in the drab appearance of Welfare,
who depressed each day in the midnight light of CSI reruns
and watched through the stale plotlines in squalor Dewdney,
viewing the macabre of real life on the old boob tube,
who lay daily nearly twenty-four/seven from sun to sun down
to midnight to Law & Order to Murder She Wrote to
crime show to Criminal Minds,
an aimless conglomeration of chaotic headcases leaping from hotels
off fences off cement balconies off commercial Broadway
out from their skulls,
blahblablabbering sobbing pleading telling truths
and experiences, mentalities, and ass bruisings
and pains of asylums and old-fashioned discipline
and child groundings,
total childhoods disembowelled in complete recklessness
for several years and decades with watery eye-ducts,
lambs to the saw house in the soulless system,
who disappeared in vacancy Ridge abandoning a string of
biological parental stepping stones of forgotten principalities
agonizing Welfare fancies and Ministerial heart crushings
 and aneurisms of broken families beneath false promises
Foster’s pitifully structured houses
who lingered on and on daily in the local office
hoping for safety, and to be saved,
leaving all the numbness,
who smoked mary-jay in recess recess recess reassessing
in secondary school toward their aimless livelihoods
in existential limbo,
who remembered Potter Poe Marlyn Monroe empathy
and the beetles because brokenness inherently
enhanced our later successes,
who wandered through homes of stranger families
who only became stranger families,
who believed they would be accepted when society
grew in empathetic understanding,
who climbed in cars with social workers of the MCFD
on the impression of black & blue abuse
under grey overcast skies in a grey neighbourhood,
who lagged in wealth and nutrition in East Vancouver
sojourning homes or hostels or streets and lingered
outside comforting coffee shops to display messages
about desperation and struggle a helpless case and so
accepts generous tips for food,
who faded into the backgrounds of political conversations
leaving the baggage behind at the airport carrousel
and the smog and acid rain of truth washing over
the dumpster fire ministry,
who reoffended on the homefront judging the forgotten
in wigs and suits with dark cold ignorant eyes
repugnant in their pale visage passing on blunted
memos,
who bashed in brain matter with their clubs promoting
the narcissistic mechanical drive of bureaucracy,
who promised in compensation ads on TV screens
preaching and unveiling while ambulances blare
saving the Opioid Crisis, and failing the Opioid
Crisis, and the system also failed,
who convulsed in dark alleyways emaciated and shaking
at the foot of other systemic injectors,
who clasped their lovers by the waist and smiled in
ecstasy in shoddy hotel rooms having no place better
except for their own hyperactive imagination and nature,
who struggled their limbs snared in the threads of the ministry’s webs
and were sucked dry bleeding prosperity and opportunities,
who themselves were cocooned by the beastly sculptors
and howled in agony,
who beat and were beaten by those man-like avatars,
the minister, constrictions of children and family
development,
who bawled at night time at morning commutes in car rides
and the food court in the local mall and graveyard
leaking their hot tears uncontrollably to whoever
was willing to listen,
who gasped jerkily trying to speak but ended up with a sputter
embraced by loving arms when the white-cloaked woman
came to teach me/us kindness,
who left their biological families for the three old curmudgeons of life
the down-hardened curmudgeon of the independent capitalist
the down-hardened curmudgeon that builds a farm from the
ground up and the down-hardened curmudgeon that does
everything except laze on the sofa and drill out the economical life
blood of the Architect’s matrix,
who construed rage and passion with a puff of cigarette
a one nightstand a swig of Johnnie Walker and fumbled
out the door, and persisted down the street and
into traffic and perished dying in the arms with a
phantasm of ultimate sedation and delight evading
the final judgement of the eternal mind,
who softened the blow of a thousand children shaking
in the dark, and were tired-eyed in their twilight hour
but created security to ease the transition out of the dark,
unveiling light beneath the cracks and scars in the flesh,
who walked on humming through Academia in multitude of sleepless
nights, Dr. West secret voice for us crows, winged people and
singers of less fortunate – pure jubilation for happy long gone
memories of numerous vacays in cozy log cabins & Christmas
dinners, live theatre plays, accidental storm-chasing across the prairie
plains in the Honda Odyssey or toward the Hoodoos after
asking for the Voodoos at the greeter’s deck at the Drumheller
Museum & particularly meeting the gas station checkpoints that serve
dishwater coffee, & don’t forget the hole in the wall
Chinese restaurants,
who drifted from bleak terrible situations were moved in
strokes, awoke the home of sudden service, and
dragged themselves out of prison bedrooms drained
with nulled emotion and flashbacks of the beast’s angered
fury & floundered into adulthood alley,
who worked each night in dish pits with their hands bleeding
dry and cracked hoping for life promotion in the minimum
wage sector to provide a house of permanence,
who survived incredible traumas in the welfare houses
of East Hastings hidden behind the grey veil
of the great recession & their bodies shall be
bundled with garbage bag in regret,
who served the sentence of menial labour or tested
social programs in the manured field of the grounds
of Oakalla,
who wailed at the bureaucracy of living normal with their pickaxes
picking at precious stones and bad jokes,
who stayed in basement suites seething in the shadows
close to the woods, and stood gazing at the glass towers
in the far-off distance,
who choked behind a dumpster of Water Street draped
with smog beneath the soft underbelly atmosphere
veiled by flag of acceptance,
who scrawled every midnight till dawn groaning and
moaning about shadowy apparitions on the wall,
when by sunrise were but mere orations of paranoia,
who unended fast food trash bins half-eaten burgers, fries, handheld pies,
fillet o’ fish & breakfast wraps hoping for a taste from the
exquisite meal paradise,
who climbed themselves into clothing donation bins
looking for somewhere to sleep,
who tossed their pennies into the fountains to place their trust
in superstition constituting the realm of luck, & fifty dollar
bills appeared in their Tim Horton’s cup for the entire month
of December,
who slipped an extra pill consecutively each week incoherently,
convulsed and were pushed to operate rusty cashiers where
they believed they were receiving a living wage and teared up,
who were consuming by their grave upbringing on Dewdney Trunk
Rd among blares of harden wisdom & the trumped-up chatter
of the stone sentries of conduct & the Socratic ramblings of the agents
of knowing & the toxic miasma of diabolical ignorant accessors or
were pinned by the raging bull of incomprehensible fate,
who leapt the Commerical Skytrain tracks this happens more
than you think and left battered and broken to the gawks
of commercial counterculture cafes & ambulances without
much word of concern,
who spoke to their posters in frustration, climbed out the second
floor window, stepped out on the exposed roof, leapt onto
the fence, ran down the backyards of the old complex, escaped
into wild woods shoeless hidden unseen evidence of age
repetitive sob songs lit the cig and coughed up bemoaning
into open air, screams from their blackened lungs and the
bellow of hackneyed storytellers,
who strolled along the memory-lanes of trauma
wandering about one another’s cupboard under the stairs
prison-like bedroom or cinematic Nostalgia reviews,
who stayed over the weekends to discover if I found
my chosen family or they had chosen me, or they chose
me to become apart of their chosen family,
who traveled toward Victoria, who visited old friends in Victoria,
who went back to Victoria & conversed in hope, who took
care in Victoria & wept & healed in Victoria and returned to find
out the Why, & now Victoria is hollow for her moving stories,
who collapsed under their own expectations in helpless schools
wishing for each teachers’ blessing and approval and grades
until the child brightened its mind for a glimpse,
who flung through their teenage years hoping for imaginary relief,
with a quiet home life and the serenade of security in their minds
who chanted calming ohms to Riverview,
who fled to Sooke to reset a mental bond, or Drumheller
or Gulf Islands to the ocean kayakers or Old Montreal
to Cohen to Carberry to the King Spud or the search
for soul,
who proclaimed insanity to the courts implying the system
has failed & were traded away with their garbage
bag suitcases & and their toys & a broken mind,
who chucked peanuts at MCFD workers about parental Darwinism
and evidently showcased themselves lying on the concrete
streets of the poorhouse with gaunt visages and incomprehensible
mutterings of salvation, begging loose change hand-outs,
and who were gifted only the empty promises of social housing
livable wages safe drugs mental support decent jobs summer
camping & debt relief,
who in unironic rage flipped-out only at a single fateful forced
family visit, recovering shortly in a stupor
coming back in short periods mentally drained apart from a flicker
of sunlight, and mist and rolling clouds, to the internal
mental chaos of the wards of state of the shattered resources
of the cracked system,
Beautiful Columbia’s Riverview’s and Woodland’s withered walls,
jabbering with phantasms of the void, reading and performing
in the twilight hour of sink or swim, imagining a dream life fantasy,
corpses drifted downstream as light as driftwood,
with father finally caught, and the final paranoid whisper
dismissed from the ministerial collective, and the final
gavel slammed at high noon and the final verdict
passed on the beast in stunned silence and the final
morsel of logic conducted the final sensation of mental
security, a brass pen flourished ink upon a piece of white
paper, and with that bit of willful ignorance, nothing but
a series of unfortunate events awaited –
oh, Alex, while you never knew me, I know the reason,
and even now those who survived are caught
in the poisonous fog of electoral promises –
and who in retrospect fought through muddy pits
hyper-focused upon the blatant disregard of decency
of human kindness the baggage the emotion & the humming
Chrysler,
Who fantasized and attempted love in full genuinity
through warm memories punctuated by challenging times,
and captured the essence of genuine soul and welcomed the
embrace of the village which raised the survivors
and gave the tools and wisdom of foresight
coupled in unison with kindness of a loving
chosen family,
to forego the context and evaluations of faulty
human error and talk behind closed doors and
shy away from guilt, denied although admitting
the stark reality to heal the sines of a broken mind
in their exposed and defenceless bodies,
 the throwback kid and church-led orphan in history,
forgotten, yet remembered here for the tragedy
of becoming the voice of lost opportunity well
after death,
and climbed over adversity in wispy attire of passions
in the lush pastures of the artistries and painted
the sorrows of Canada’s exposed passed for rage into a
woe is me melodious wail that shook the middle classes due
to the surfacing media reports
with the premature discovery of their experience of life taken
out from their vocal chords misfortunate to sing
for centuries to come.
II
What sentries of education and metre sticks
whipped across their backs and took away
their drive and willpower?
Evonne! Ignorance! Neglect! Horrendous! Ashtrays
and discarded cigarettes! Children dying in their
homesteads! Boys beaten in bedrooms! Police officers
searching in the dark!
Evonne! Evonne! Ministry of Evonne! Evonne the careless!
Egregious Evonne! Evonne the absolute condemner
of children!
Evonne the illogical institution! Evonne the skeletal school
and ministry of webs! Evonne whose jurisdiction are
forfeit! Evonne the wooden gavel of welfare! Evonne
the mismanaged ministries!
Evonne whose visage is pure stone! Evonne whose vibe
Energy is black cloud! Evonne whose fingers are death
sentences! Evonne whose jowls are a bombshell launcher!
Evonne whose ears are cottonfields!
Evonne whose eyes see no evil! Evonne whose office sits
at the end of the hall like a looming courtroom! Evonne
whose ideals plot and drone in the heavy rains! Evonne
whose papers and signatures drape the futures of these
children!
Evonne whose cares are limited cheques and resources!
Evonne whose essence is coal and cubicles! Evonne
whose scarcity is the shadow of social welfare! Evonne
whose destiny is a smog of runaround excuses! Evonne
whose voice is the only memory!
Evonne with whom I talk frankly! Evonne with whom I
Imagine demons! Doubt with Evonne! Pleaser to
Evonne! Stone-cold and selfless to Evonne!
Evonne who infected my childhood from day one! Evonne
with whom I am baggage without a home! Evonne who
terrified me for my uncertain future! Evonne who I distrusted!
Dream of a day without Evonne! Sunlight shimmering beyond
the grey clouds!
Evonne! Evonne! Spiderwebbed hotels! Dilapidated townships!
Spider politics! Blind judges! Heartless institutions! Hypnotized people!
Forgotten foster homes! Marble leaders! Horrendous sentences!
They crumbled their shoulders carrying Evonne to the peak position,
which permeates and is poison to all of us!
Foresights! Premonitions! Delirium! Logics! Outcries! Revelation!
All float down the Fraser River! Ignored!
Inspirations! Idolizations! Radiances! Messiahs! The entire cruise
ship of unspoken controversial crap!
Changes! Along the banks! Bridges and witch hunts! Lows! Condemned!
Hopes! Decade long child tears and terrors! Memories! Old wounds!
Survivor generation! Heading up the shit creek of life!
Absolute abhorrent sneering up river! They knew everything! The sunken eyes!
The bruised cheeks! They closed the door! Ravens leapt out the
windows! To freedom! Flailing! Lifting chains! Over the Fraser!
Into the clouds!
III
Alex Gervais! I shared a life in foster care
where you had it rougher than I did
I shared a life in foster care
where you felt number than I did
 I shared a life in foster care
where you walked a similar path to mine
 I shared a life in foster care
where you’ve experienced far worse than beatings
I shared in a life in foster care
where you now rest after this harrowing bout
I shared a life in foster care
where we became crows trying to survive
the same misguided system
I shared a life in foster care
where you hit rock bottom and your subsequent
suicide made the six o’ clock news
I shared a life in foster care
where the snapshots of the mind don’t permit
the radiances of the human experience
I shared a life in foster care
where you ate the bread of charities of the givers
of Red Cross
I shared a life in foster care
where you feigned on the promises of your social
workers the dementors of the system
I shared a life in foster care
where whispered into your pillow that you’re failing
the system of the genuine matrix of this hoarse
reality
I shared a life in foster care
where you strummed on the emotional violin
the child is blameless and honest they should never
be unjustly tossed into a cruel family
I shared a life in foster care
where a thousand more prayers will never revive
your heartbeat once more after its pumped to
exhaustion after the jump from that hotel window
I shared a life in foster care
where you alleged your new guardians of assault
and planned the Canadian grave investigation
against the Catholic Church
I shared a life in foster care
where you cracked the veil of the Ministry of Children
Family Development and reignite our drive for justice
with supernatural
I shared a life in foster care
where there are nearly 50, 000 crows all together
croaking the broken chant of the universal
system
I shared a life in foster care
where we huddle and cry for Canada in our locked
rooms the same Canada that shuts its eyes and
didn’t see the problem
I shared a life in foster care
where we went to sleep relieved from the trauma
by our own ethereal wings flying overhead they came
to unlock our rusted chains the false home consumes
itself Yes damaged crows fly skyward Yes sunny-skied
surprize of kindness the long sentence is finished Yes
freedom leave your tatters behind we’re healing at last
I shared a life in foster care
in my mind you return drooping from a long
flight across blackened skies too tired for
tears to my window and tell me your
story.