jon brooks no mean city

1 No Mean City 4.15

2 No Good 4.12
3 How Good It Is to Love Someone, How Right It Is to Care 4.01
4 Miracle on Bleecker Street 3.41
5 The Curve of the Earth 3.37
6 St. James Town 5.12
7 Two Storey Town 3.17
8 Kept Plans 4.00
9 The Industrial Part of Town 6.28
10 Stairwell Anniversary 4.42
11 By the Lake 4.17
12 Michael Power 3.26

13 Ray Westernson’s Mistake 10.50

Produced by Pat Simmonds and Jon Brooks

All songs by Jon Brooks, Fallen Tree Songs (SOCAN)

jonbrooks.ca

FALLEN
REE
RECORDS

© + P 2005 Jon Brooks under exclusive license to Fallen Tree Records Inc.
fallentreerecords.com
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page 3

But Paul said, “I am a man which am a Jew from Tarsus,
a city in Cilicia, a citizen of no mean city…” Acts 21.39
No Mean City
She left her basement in Scarborough.
She left her Scarborough behind.
Past hydro wires, mall paths,
and low-rise structures of practical cause.
And neither she nor Scarborough said goodbye.
A train: it leaves every 5 or 10
but a woman, she’ll leave only once
to love with no mean decision,
to live in no mean city.
He left his bedroom in Maple.
He left his Maple behind.
Past starter homes finishing ghetto,
sad labyrinths of a practical cause.
And neither he nor Maple said goodbye.
And a bus: it leaves every 45
but a man, he’ll leave only once
to love with no mean unswaying,
to live in no mean city.
And guilt: that memory of all good intent
for us to drown or wash in;
and to trust with no mean unknowing
is to live in no mean city.
No Good
She calls it “The Friday Night Surprise”
’cause it catches fun-greedy eyes
as they walk home, mom and son and rented movie.
And it’s been three months so far
that the Loonies in the swearing jar
have kept these “Friday Nights” a week’s reward.
And it’s alright and it’s no good,
and “it’s just a little while we’ll stay.”
And for $420 a month:
shared bathroom, fridge two floors above,
two beds, two chairs, two of every other creeping thing.†
And no visitors after 11,
no Covenant blessed by a misty Heaven;
its all dumb hope and a little bit of water damage.
And it’s alright and it’s no good,
and “it’s just a little while we’ll stay.”
And we’ll stay another day, another we’ll stay,
another “coulda done somethin’ better than this”
as I feed the hungry dove out on the window ledge.
And in our hearts we’ll know no lonely fear
and we’ll stay.
Doric Temple façade on a tuft of front yard,
the architect long ago died a naked drunk.
And before Fred Gardiner’s highway
we sat up over a lake
and the water was our chapel and kind God.
And now the garbage of a century
sandbags trenches ‘tween home and street
down Queen, past Strachan,
all the way down to Roncesvalles.
And it’s alright and it’s no good,
and “it’s just a little while we’ll stay.”
Another dollar store toy
drags tired mom and boy
home under the flood
of Parkdale’s red setting sun.
† Genesis 6.20
How Good It Is to Love Someone, How Right It Is to Care
Furniture on the front porch,
bike lock on a wooden fence.
Peeling paint on a brick and frame,
a sign mumbles: “Rooms For Rent.”
A rainbow and a dream-catcher,
bay windows of some undoubting town –
before the Irish took this
bullshit Second Empire down.
And how good it is to love someone,
how right it is to care.
How good it is to love someone,
how right it is to care.
The love seat from The Second Take
was a bitch up uneven stairs.
Found the hotplate in the hall the night
they took old, deaf Elaine away.
A filter-burned down cigarette
lying fetal in a tin foil tray;
the kind at the all-night Parliament Coffee Time
where the Tamils hang.
And how good it is to love someone,
how right it is to care.
How good it is to love someone,
how right it is to care.
Christ’s sad eyes on the wall,
dishes in the sink,
mattress on the floor
stained in life and bonding souls that stayed
on it before.
And how good it is to love someone,
how right it is to care.
How good it is to love someone,
how right it is to care.
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Miracle on Bleecker Street
He was walking home from work
bored as all who walk to work;
bored as all who click the mouse
between emails.
She was barefoot and on the pan
and bored as all who walk the pan;
bored as all who grind their teeth
between a fix.
It takes a fleeting to realize
the familiar in a stranger’s eyes –
a witness to some weak chance
left for us.
That day on Bleecker Street
the sidewalk turned to sand.
That day on Bleecker Street
the first fish crawled the land.
And if betrayal comes by a kiss
and an abyss by every summit
I’m gonna wait here for
Saint Francis to come back.
He was lonely with a credit card
and hungry as the fed with a credit card;
hungry as the fat with cynical hope
for something new.
She was lonely for the desert and sea,
for Mogadishu of the desert and sea;
Mogadishu where the extremes meet
and disappear.
And it’s a sadness of no mean size
that can see it in an other’s eyes.
He bought her a beer and a shot
at the Steerburger Bar and Grill.
And all down Bleecker Street
I heard Saint Francis laugh.
All down Bleecker Street
he danced and kissed her hand.
And if betrayal comes by a kiss
and an abyss by every summit
I’ m gonna wait here for
Saint Francis to come back.
The Curve of the Earth
It’s the laughter of the heart It’ll marry you or leave you
that hears the crying of the times. with the baby on the way.
It’s the fruit of the nipple Its honesty is love and God
of the truth of the lie. and murder on the same day.
It’s just the marrow in the bones It’s holier than water,
in the pit left to save us. it’s the mother of the sun –
It’s a thank-you to the Void, a sadness when it’s sober
on the road to Damascus. and it’s fear when it’s drunk.
Only blindness sees it clearly,
It’s in every good decision only darkness hears its call.
and in every bad one too. It’s as impossible as faith
I think it’s somewhere in the walk and crueler than no faith at all
above the road, beneath the shoe. and courage is the curve of the earth.
I’ve seen it in the suburbs –
and by that I mean the city –
and by that I mean the scattered –
and by that I mean unity
and courage is the curve of the earth.
It’s that dollar store toy
between the single mom and boy.
It doesn’t always have a job
but it’s never underemployed.
It takes half your pay for rent
and leaves the dishes in the sink.
It stains the mattress on the floor,
it’s only never where we think.
It’s a two storey town of suffering and beauty
on a flat earth, darling, as the mean eye will see it.
”Just tell it to me straight and in the language of the age –
I got no time for poetry in these End days!”
Trust is the evidence of things unseen‡
Sight is the seed of a no mean city.
and courage is the curve of the earth.
‡ Hebrews 11.1
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St. James Town
For John Unrau
Banana boxes No Frills filled.
Picture proof to the roof of European time killed.
Yes, it took forever to pack when we left St. James Town.
And I miss them green, gaunt, pale-faced days –
too planless to be afraid.
And we were happy when we left St. James Town.
Smell foreign cooking down the tenement halls.
Familiar fights through contract deadline walls.
And we were happy when we left St. James Town.
Down leafy Parliament Money Mart way
To hear your sweet and sad complaints
My life, my love, my saint of saints,
My dark Rosaleen§
you said it’d be okay when we left St. James Town.
We took an elevator up and out a fat ‘50s womb,
”economy of space” went the rhetoric of ruin
and now an underground
parking garage is a polis’ tomb.
fifteen megalith, beekeeper façades:
a filing cabinet on a tuft of sod.
So pregnant when we left St. James Town.
Borrowed passage from rent to money down;
debt leadeth us from our thirty-three storey town.
Nervous-happy, half-sure of ourselves
when we left St. James Town.
Down leafy Parliament Money Mart way
To hear your sweet and sad complaints,
My life, my love, my saint of saints
My dark Rosaleen§
you said it’d be okay when we left St. James Town.
§ ”Dark Rosaleen,” James Clarence Mangan
Every other Thursday you’d get paid,
our communion cup in Swiss Chalet
with care-package coupons from our Trudeau parents.
Then reminiscent in a Danforth snug –
as close as you get to the Sligo stout;
and all couples: they never get bored
of talking about where they met.
Then, beer-buzzed back in love over the Parkway
where the Sackville boats back into the clay.
We were happy when we left St. James Town.
Down leafy Parliament Money-Mart way
To hear your sweet and sad complaints,
My life, my love, my saint of saints
My dark Rosaleen§
you said it’d be okay when we left St. James Town.
Two Storey Town
For Barry Callaghan
On a right-angled street in a Right-minded time;
A gridiron named after colonist’s wives.
You wore a nametag, I bummed a smoke
in a two storey town.
Balcony flowers over neon signs,
dignities set to terracotta and lime.
We were unplanned – like an Idea in a two storey town.
And here underneath The World’s Tallest Free Standing lie.
Ah well, at least the sun mocks only as she shines.
And you loved a guy – he had a wife and son;
it takes a good heart to betray someone.
Yeah, we were reckless – like Charity in a two storey town.
But a city of eyeless smiles and clerks,
a hostelry of souls that smirk.
We were impossible – like a God in a two storey town.
And here underneath The World’s Tallest Free Standing lie.
Ah well, at least the sun mocks only as she shines.
”La, da da da, da: da da da, da da.
”La da da da, da da da, da da.
”La da da da, da da, da da, da da, da da.”
Breathing in the second hand literal thought
under a smog of proving only what’s not
and believing in nothing but the numb great heart attack.
Yeah, we were bloody – like Amity in a two storey town.
We thought we were pure – like a service charge
in a two storey town.
Baby, your buildings are big but darling,
you’re a two storey town.
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Kept Plans
As every pawnshop lifts its top down repenting Church Street,
every broken token of good intent lays unveiled for all to see.
I was as close to kept plans as I could be.
Over your shoulder the distracting infidelity
in the listless headlights of all heartsick bar TVs.
I was as close to kept plans as I could be.
Into an arcade with quarters made if our server’s still down.
No more bread or milk, but the cupboard’s filled
with condiments and sand.
I was as close to kept plans as I could be.
For just a breeze we brush by the sleeve of misty connectedness;
it’s a place we vow to meet more than stumbling life lets.
I was as close to kept plans as I could be.
The Industrial Part of Town
On 23 October 1956 student demonstrators
demanding the withdrawal of Soviet troops from
Hungary were fired upon in front of the radio station
in Budapest. An uprising lasted until 4 November
1956. 3,000 Hungarians were killed and 200,000
fled their homeland. Approximately 37,000 Hungarian
refugees were admitted to Canada following the 1956
Hungarian Revolution.
For Gino Zmak
”Body Found in the Industrial Part of Town.”
Behind the dumpster by the seventh unit,
a foreboding scent of sawdust and piece-work to it.
Immortal youths’ paw print and debris,
broken glass and roach clips sit like babies’ teeth.
The first witnesses were on their third date,
slurred the gum smack and lipstick of illegal-age
to the junior cop on up the food chain
to the papers with the girl on the last page:
”Body Found in the Industrial Part of Town.”
The chief investigator on the scene:
a comfortoble-in-her-clothes-early-40s-33,
noted the work that had been done on his teeth –
knew that he’d never paid the extra bus fare up Jane Street.
On his hands there was that orange-brown residue
a characteristic of a Short Colt .32.
”Whoever said it,” she said, “had to b’n blind,
who said ‘the dead, they look peaceful from where they lie.’”
Glorified in the industrial port of town.
His parents got out in ‘56.
”Ah, Rakoczi Street¶ accept our sincerest.”
From a boat, and then on to a train,
off to the office where they touch-up your last name,
and to that hostel with the mattress on the floor
where circle anxious thoughts of souls that stayed on it before,
and to that work crew that you follow around
to that second job that guards that second life you found.
And glory to this industrial part of town.
His dad had proudly passed down the store;
a modest soccer shop he worked his whole back and forth for.
And by the same hand that fed his old man
built the trough that feeds a fatter, needier demand.
And the Lord appointed the great box-store
to swallow up a sleepy shamed-faced, small retail.
The bullet entered in the roof of his mouth
and ricocheted inside his skull before it got out.
In dust we part in the industrial part of town.
The End and illness that absorbed the air
dried up the thick and generous blood in his hair.
Revolution’s child born and raised to
embody all the hope of second life and soul anew.**
But who dies outside at least they get found,
a Phoenix burns itself always on the outskirts of a town.
And after it’s cleaned and before it’s identified
a body waits in stainless steel that’s smooth and galvanized
and custom built in the industrial part of town.
¶ Rakoczi Street is Budapest’s main street.
** ”Dark Rosaleen,” James Clarence Mangan
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Stairwell Anniversary
Marked down and unredeemed on collateral Church Street.
The blood-red 502s flow and clot a steel-veined Queen.
And it slid loosely over cold fingers.
She smiled sad and said, “don’t nothin’ ever fit?
’cept for you, yeah, you always fit me so good.”
Faded lipstick highlighted that February day they met
on the Player’s Light calendar, for a little luck she kept.
He was a bike courier, number 829 –
ah, but what can’t be nailed down one day gets away.
He said, “except for you” ‘cause it was their anniversary today.
He laughed, “at least they can’t say we don’t spend time in bed,”
a spent mattress stained in lights and darks and lighter fluid.
Hard candle wax on a Coke can, a hug does more than a kiss.
She smiled sad and said, “Moss Park’s got nothin’ I’d miss,
’cept for you, even your bad lies I will miss.”
By the Lake
On hotplate, in dark light, the new sun shining.
I looked at my nametag and I thought about the End.
I called in sick and met her at the Katyn†† monument,
picked up a 6-pack, down to the lake we went.
By the lake, by the lake, by the lake we lay.
Save me with sunscreen and your soft embrace.
Embrace! Embrace! Embrace!
Squeeze all my blindness unto its last day.
And maybe you could share your grace
with me again, on another day.
She told me about her family and how she misses her dad.
I told her, her company was the best I’d ever had.
And not nothing could go wrong, not nothing could wreck
the sound of waves breaking and her breathe on my neck.
By the lake, by the lake, by the lake we lay.
Save me with sunscreen and your soft embrace.
Embrace! Embrace! Embrace!
Squeeze all my blindness unto its last day.
And maybe you could share your grace
with me again, on another day.
The birds thanked the sky and the fish thanked the swim.
Our lips thanked the last sip and blood thanked the skin.
In this world of suffering, this world of beauty,
some days, still, darling, we’re no mean city.
By the lake, by the lake, by the lake we lay.
Save me with sunscreen and your soft embrace.
Embrace! Embrace! Embrace!
Squeeze all my blindness unto its last day.
And maybe you could share your grace
with me again, on another day.
†† The Katyn Memorial plaque reads: “In remembrance of
15,000 Polish prisoners of war who vanished in 1940 from
the camps in the USSR at Kozelsk, Ostashkov and Starobelsk.
Of these, over 4,000 were later discovered in mass graves
at Katyn near Smolensk murdered by the Soviet state security
police.”
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Michael Power

A plaque outside of Toronto’s Metro Hall reads:

”Irish Immigrants and the Fever Sheds 1847:

Fleeing disease, poverty, the failure of the potato crop and government indifference, over 100,000 Irish immigrants
arrived in Canada in 1847. Of these, nearly 40,000 passed through Toronto, a city of some 20,000. Many
thousands died on the ‘Coffin’ ships on the journey from Ireland to Canada. Many more died at the quarantine
station at Grosse-Île, a small island northeast of Quebec City. From Grosse-Île and Quebec City, immigrants came by
steamship to the ports along the St. Lawrence and Lake Ontario.

In the summer of 1847, 863 Irish immigrants died of Typhus in the fever sheds erected by the Toronto Board of Health
at the northwest corner of King and John Streets. There were at least 12 sheds, 72 feet long by 25 feet wide.

Immigrants landed at the foot of Simcoe St. The healthy were assisted out of the city as soon as possible; the sick were
treated in hospital or at the fever sheds. They were allowed to stay a maximum of six days, receiving a daily ration of
three quarters of a pound of bread and meat. Survivors were sent to the convalescent home at the corner of Bathurst
and Front Streets. Most of the dead were buried beside St. Paul’s Roman Catholic Church at Queen and Power
Streets.

Among those who died ministering to the sick was Toronto’s first Roman Catholic bishop, Michael Power, D.D. He
contracted typhus and died on October 1, 1847 and is buried in St. Michael’s Cathedral.”

12 fever sheds,
one-storey high.
72 feet by 25.

We’re only Godless in the heart’s absence.

O, Michael Power, of no mean town.

Of no mean city, of no mean town.
See to us now.

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No Mean City Kept Plans
Jon Vocals, Guitar Jon Vocal, Guitar, Harmonium
Dan MacDonald Drums
Pat Simmonds Guitar, Bass The Industrial Part of Town
Jon Vocal, Guitar
No Good James Gray Organ
Jon Vocals, Guitars
Pat Simmonds Guitars, Bass Stairwell Anniversary
Jon Vocal, Guitar
How Good It Is to Love Someone, How Right It Is to Care Claire Jenkins Vocal
Jon Vocal, Guitar, Harmonica Dan MacDonald Organ
James Gray Piano
By the Lake
The Curve of the Earth Jon Vocals, Guitar
Jon Vocals, Guitar, Harmonica, Steel Guitar, Shakers, Frying Pans Claire Jenkins Vocals
Dan MacDonald Drums Dan MacDonald Drums
Pat Simmonds Bass Pat Simmonds Bass

Miracle on Bleecker Street Michael Power

Jon Vocal, Guitars, Harmonica Jon Vocals, Guitar, Harmonium, Steel Guitar
James Gray Piano, Organ
Claire Jenkins Vocal Ray Westernson’s Mistake
Dan MacDonald Drums Jon Voclas, Guitar, Harmonica
Pat Simmonds Bass Kelly Hood Tin Whistle
Pat Simmonds Programming
St. James Town
Jon Vocal, Guitar Chris Goddard as Wayne, Performance Management Team Leader
Cyrus Lane as Jim Darnell, Buisness Unit Marketing Manager of Headwear
Two Storey Town
Jon Vocal, Guitar, Harmonium, Marimba
Dan MacDonald Drums
Pat Simmonds Steel Guitar, Bass

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 All Songs
Jon Brooks

Recorded
Pat Simmonds
Makarori Studios, Toronto
Piano recorded at St. George the Matyr Church, Toronto

Mixed
Pat Simmonds
Gan Ainm Productions

Cover Painting
Cottingham School with the Black Flag
Christiane Pflug, 1971

Photography
Jon Brooks
Sandra Alves

Layout
Pat Simmonds
Christian Weller

Thank You
Wil Zmak
Gethin Edward
Rachel Melas
Kevin Swayze at Gan Ainm Productions
Kelly Hood and Padraic Simmonds
Cyrus Lane
Michael Pflug
Max Woolaver
Brenda Enns
Jack and Kay Brooks
Sam Grosso
Ken Caveney
Declan O’Doherty

Love to Sandra

All songs © 2005 Jon Brooks, Fallen Tree Songs (SOCAN)

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