once a home...

they perch on sites worth so many millions

above spanish banks and the burrard inlet -

these three modest pseudo-mansions of the 
last century now looking forlorn, abandoned

they have been sitting neglected for years 

in the overgrown and barely fenced off lots -

waiting for their inevitable demise to make

way for ever larger versions to rise again

once the residential pride of a few families

 such vanquished homes are now reduced to 

another boarded up desecration for those 

with the means to build bigger and biggest

less and less arden

just another old run down apartment building on east broadway waiting to be replaced...
I have driven, bus-ed, biked by too many times and always the name on the glass above the front door catches my attention - pulling from some nostalgic incantation...
so many times, too, I tell myself to go back and capture salvage save it from oblivion,
and now finally on the eve of the building's demise, I am here to record it before ARDEN APTS. in pale gold lettering shatters to pieces along with the rest of the building...

and such arden apartments with flaking paint and sad-eyed windows are no more...

WilMar:: letting the light in again

The WilMar House on Southwest Marine Drive is one lucky oldie to have escaped the demolition crunch. It had been occupied by three successive generations of the same family since it was built in 1925 by Willard and Mary Kitchen, and the last one and only granddaughter died here alone in 2006. She had bequeathed her whole estate to the Vancouver Foundation which has since sold the property to someone who is willing to save the mansion by modifying it into two separate units and adding a few more houses on the two acre site.

Having the opportunity to visit it on a recent Vancouver Heritage Foundation House Tour, it was an unexpected surprise to find this large Tudor Revival style house left mostly intact in its original state. It has been unoccupied for almost 10 years now but maintained in good condition. Windows were uncovered of their plywood boarding, the rooms aired out and light flooded in once again to welcome strangers into the reclusive spaces on this sunny spring morning...

The separate coach house with its unfinished interior and barn-like atmosphere... James would not have been happy living here, even if he could drive some fancy cars!

the end of a house

within three violent days of desecration,

the house next door was completely gone

- now a non-narrative of airy dampness,

loose earth, rocks, and broken bricks...

 christmas colours before the denudation -

 and 60 years of a family's history reduced to

tossed out rags and shattered glass,

twisted metal and crushed plants...

a house so cherished with handbuilt attainment, 

faithfully maintained through the seasons -

the love-red paint on trims and cupboard doors,

worn adirondack chairs and aging hearts...

the rolled up vinyl mat that covered the back perch,

tossed down to question the endless nulling void

- the lives forever lived, the memories neutralized,

the dreams evaporated, the voices silenced...

like a screaming pot, the chimney flue lies in vain,

no more secret papers smoking through its hollow

- it will soon be buried with the porcelain bowls, 

the faceless mirrors and the almost inconsolable... 

a small house of quick feasts and fissures, 

a silent house of desert photos and smuggled cacti,

of silver souvenir spoons and old board games

played out on the lifespan of a round table top...

 so many hours and days and years assigned

to the timely tending and the feckless defending -

and then it is all over, all move on and out

of near sight, not even the hatchet remains...

the century old cherry tree in the backyard

reduced years ago to double doubting trunks -

still reached for the wintry skies, yet knowing

that it will never see the spring again...

a christmas epilogue to 1645 east 14th avenue, home to the mcmurray family for sixty years
 

ann's house:: emptying out

a bare rod and two wire hooks
in an empty closet where the

orange carpet has not faded

 white cotton sheets shield the
emptied shelves where fruits in

mason jars were once stacked

in the rec room a few boxes of
old board games sit on a counter

above the now empty cupboards

 the bar shelves where bottles stood

and glasses perched, some to be

filled on those cold empty nights

 the lone lamp left stranded on the
paneled wall glows a forlorn survey
to soft lit the quiet emptied room

the twin beds up in the attic room
are for sale, along with the three
bedside tables long emptied out

strewn on top of a shag rug are
some old frames and scrapbooks

emptied of photos and memories

 two empty vases at a dollar apiece

wait to be filled with bouquets again

bright as the one painted on the tray

the dull red basement door is locked,
bolted and barred as always, even

while the house is emptying all out

Ann and her late husband Lou had lived in this house for 60 years - 60 years of cumulative belongings to empty out, to eviscerate piece by piece to the best offer of the nostalgic gatherers, the predatory collectors, the ambivalent deal seekers... [addendum: in the end, what did not sell was trucked away by junk removers who charged Ann much more than she ever paid for any of it brand new]

When the house is emptied of the last chair, lamp, book, picture, ornament, tool, memory - will it remain to be re-modelled and refilled with new chairs, lamps, books - or will it die in a dusty heap of splintered wood, crushed doors and shattered glass... [addendum: it died a most destructive death, the whole lot obliterated in a day except for the single holly tree on the southeast corner, and now, a dull red duplex with cream trims has replaced the old white house with the bright red trims]

I preserve a few images of this home in memory of Lou who built everything in it, who tended the garden meticulously, whose paintbrush was ever handy for a fresh coat, and who died in his own house - never having to see it now, in its sadly empty state... [addendum: all gone now, wiped out and replaced like it had never been there...how quickly the memory clicks off and long lives dissipate]

the fenestration of an empty building

when all the glass has been smashed in, the invitations go out -
edifying hosts, no bar -
the front door may be missing, but climb through the windows anyway
the lights will not come on, so
feel your way along the soggy floors, the walls still standing 
through the south facing windows, the rising moon beams into large empty rooms
negative spaces between absent furniture
when maximum capacity is reached, cast your phobic angst from the glassless openings
the cold night air is neither rational nor engaging
wait for water/drink, water/rain, water/blast
if none is forthcoming, turn inward again, away from the window arrangement to the damp warmth of a hundred bodies

avoiding all wet corners

will the morning light bring a forced surrender, flapping from a penetrating edict of sorts
interlocation is designed to draw out all those who withstood and still standing
soon they will surround the tense will compounded and block the joyless gape of a sentenced building
the political abstract to be waylaid by a loud compendium of passion
but such wholesome infestation is always assailable

beware the dangling buckets
 

fallen states

 an understatement of disrepair

hammers home the sordid truth

more will fall in exiled state

preponderances null and void

midnight oil...

arrorogate along the trickety track...

surrenrender into the intrigante trunk...

forever ever deep in the hotshitoil...


Paraverbal Mutterings Paraverbal Muttering
is my first self-published book of poetics and photoimagery selected from this savage states blog...
now available for sale on blurb.ca
www.blurb.ca/bookstore/detail/3865859#promote-pane 

[the title of this collection is appropriated from an anonymous stencil found on a wall in japantown]

sleuthing through finn slough...

A few minutes south from the glitzy hustle-bustle of Richmond central flows a murky narrow slough off the Fraser River into a falling-down rustic clump of a fishing village more than a century old...
A few kilometers from the end of the towering concrete pylons of the Canada line skytrain is sited a marshy block of patchwork cabins and rusting boats that is a world and a half away from the big box chains, the asian megamalls, the multi-glut of restaurants, and the monstrous maxi-mansions...

But here, on a sun-drenched late summer's day, the micro community of Finn Slough chills to the ebb and flow of the tide, the soft whirring of swallow wings, the gentle swishing of boats tied up, the creaking of worn boardwalks across muddy stretches...

Here, too, the wary inhabitants tolerate dog walkers, excursion cyclists, curious history buffs, enthusiastic sketching artists, over-excited photographers tired of urban scenes, the odd blackberry picker, and first-time sleuths from the sympathetic republic of East Van...

And here, this picturesque mucky strip of a historical Finnish settlement is now threatened by encroaching development and the "raze the rotting pile" mentality of short-sighted, quick-buck, bottom-line feeders with complete disregard of history or ecology or conservation, and obviously a most insensitive lack of appreciation for its rusticated nordic-riverine splendour...

This Dyke Road flopdollhouse comes complete with a dirty mattress on the floor, miniature bottles and syringes strewn about, streaky walls, an unused bird's nest in a corner and billowing lace curtains...and also, a proud canadian flag tucked above the front door...

Finn Slough along Dyke Road at the south end of No. 4 Road, Richmond