The streets hath no mercy I found out today that my friend Dan (Crazy Dan, as I affectionately have called him in the past) passed away 5 days ago. They found him dead in an alley with his lungs full to capacity with liquid, because apparently the pneumonia didn't go away. It's not all that surprising though, as the illness itself takes a lot out of a regular person who has a regular place to go home to to recuperate, who has regular meals and care, much less someone who had none of the above at all.

The gentleman who told me had known him for years, and knew that Dan was quite fond of me, so he went out of his way to come and tell me today in the store. We reminisced how he was very misunderstood sometimes in the time that he was alive, but out of a lot of people we knew, he had a good heart. And he really did. It didn't matter how bad his luck was, and it was truly awful sometimes, he always had a smile, a joke or a story to tell. So, I'll miss him, but I knew he was suffering. And it sounds funny coming from me, but I really do hope he is in a better place, because he deserves it.

So Dan McMillan, here's to you. I know it's lengthy, but I wrote it a long time ago.

Crazy Dan

I told you
He says
It was crazy…

And it is crazy
This man talking so vastly
So sci-fi at me
In that bleeding together tongue
That only a never really recovered
Post-traumatic stress disorder
Borderline schizophrenia
Trucker of the skyway
Retired mechanic or postal serviceman
Nitroglycerine veined
Cyborg weapon implanted
Wild West Hero
Assassin master “James Bond style”
Emotionally scarred
Abandoned by family and society
Ex-needle junkie
“Who never hurt no one”

Who might have been someone’s grandfather
Who feeds pigeons and magpies
Rolling down the snow-covered roof
To his windowsill
Fat on his mercy
In a mild but unforthcoming winter

Every Friday night I listen
To the colorful living memoirs
To stories of a man hiding scared
In a fantastical realm

Who, like most
Is afraid of dying alone
Silently denying that his body
Thin and jutting
Is crapping out on him
Sure as an automatic Ford is wont to do
Cannot keep on
From decaying in a room at the Y
Strewn with the aluminum stars of his lonely galaxy
Crafted with the slyly emergent creativity
Briefly overshadowing a fumbling manner
Apparent to all but those who listen

Really listen.
Listen to this man whose joy is his imagination
And helping others appreciate the finer things in life

Dan, to be quite blunt
You’re incapable of getting straight to the point
But really
I never know what to tell you either.
I lack in everything but ordinary
And as I raptly listen
Your surreal reality
Becomes true as my mind’s eye sees it unfolding.
Now, I almost wonder if that is what you have in mind
As you pepper me with fiction
Mumbling halfway
Creating segues in the streamlined fashion
Admirable of a mad man

But it is the alacrity
The clarity of the minutiae
This perpetually startles me
Your inward knowledge of Cadillac engines
Greyhound routes
Tractor-trailer hydraulics
Newspaper production
And the names of all the people you’ve ever met
Who have no doubt also been held captive by your stories
As I am now

How Thompson-esque you can be
Though you surpass his brand of revelation constantly
When you start out talking train jumping
End up talking shit about four hits
Of mescaline
Of waking up under a blue Thunderbird
A “broad to the left under the dang ‘ol wheel”
Not knowing where the hell you were
But that it looks like
You had a fun time getting there.

Every time the girl got to know Dan
He discombobulated her every chance he got
As she narrowed down his affliction
Maybe his list of afflictions
He spewed random profundities
In return for her concern
Violating her view with shocking wisdom
With flickering fluorescence of bleak truths

I am always watching your face change
As you listen to me
Mopping the floor as I lift my feet up
Like a small boy waiting for his mother
To finish the grocery shopping
To buy me an ice cream
Like she used to
Your face now, as I have been watching you
Reacts in different ways.
I always know when you are pre-occupied
Or hungry.

“That Chinaman told me yesterday
That you’d been starving for three days
Don’t worry, I brought you a muffin
And fifty dollars that should get you through
Until I get the two million dollars that director owes me
When I was in all those movies with Humphrey Bogart
Man, that guy parties hard—broads all over the place
All shapes and sizes
I remember when him and I, and some of these broads
Real pretty ones
Were drinking and making plans for the shooting of the “Titanic”
These two tough guys came in and stole my cigarettes
Took my whiskey too
And Johnny Cash stood up and just plugged them both
Right in the pie-hole!”

He would laugh
As would I by sheer infection
Hidden amazement

He told me he was there when the Titanic sank
How he was in the water as the ship went down
And how he died by not drowning
But freezing to death
But as always
Reincarnation prevailed
Dan being somewhat of a body snatching
Womanizing, life-wrestling
Connoisseur
Of all things combined
That government sponsored commercials
Tell you not to do.

“The buttons were just beepin’ away
An’ all these sirens were going off
And this…oh, robot or ‘summat said
‘That’s not a good idea Dan…
You seen that movie?
Yeah, I was in it,
They put me in all that space crap
And booted me out the door
So the main actor wouldn’t get hurt
By all that junk floating around out there
You know, in space.

They owe me money for that one too
But buddy is in jail,
Edmonton Remand.
I know he’s good for the fifty grand though,
And my AISH should keep me goin’ until he gets out
If I can pay off that bloody overdraft on my bank account…”

When he sees her grin at him over her broom
It makes him smile and forget where he is for a moment
The same way he grins when the starlings peck at his window
Waiting for him to rouse
So they can have his leftover Puritan stew

He smiles the same way he was smiling
When she drove past the CN yard the other day
Seeing him basking in the sun on a lone bench
Telling it was him from the way the sun shone
Through his ears
Shaped like small satellite dishes
Insulated with that particular old man
Ear hair her grandfather had
Up until he passed away from COPD
--Something she suspects Dan will also have
Due to a repertoire of chain-smoked
Unfiltered rollies in perpetual motion
From once hard-working hands
To a miles-wracked odometer mouth
As he sits on that warm bench,
Green parka sleeves rolled up to steadily fragile-becoming wrists
Looking as he should
This god of poetry
Would have made Pound gasp
Speaking in tongues reserved for maniacs
Or a fledgling poet
This god of bursting en scene
Like he owned the place
Making a scene and breaking it
Always leaving laughter
Mirthful or malevolent in his wake
With the finesse and grace
Selective only to the impervious.

“I said what I told you just now
Because I don’t understand you
You’re too…too concerned with the negativity
Of your customers
Because I’m always here watching,
Watching your back you know,
And I see…
See how you are with the bad ones.
So, I’m telling you this
Told you that,
For your own good…
I don’t want to see you snap
And kill one of those crazy fuckers
You’re just too guided by the man
Behind the eight-ball, you know?
Don’t let them get you so damn angry
It makes me nervous to see you like that.”

I should crow now
That I make Dan nervous
Like the security guard and the super were
When they saw him here
Hour after hour
Coffee after coffee
Smoke after smoke
But I feel intense guilt as I look up
Look at him looking at me expectantly

As I read through the lines of three months
Of non-stop stream of conscious stories
Your fiction code was broken then
If only for one pleading second,
And you began to tell me about the birds.  ¶ 10:59 PM