Poet Explained: Part Six

I lost my bedroom to the Communist Party

Double Consciousness and the Veil

W.E.B. Du Bois’s famous exploration

Of the Black Experience in America

In The Souls of Black Folks

Poetry philosophy music and social analysis

Sociology, Dude

And Du Bois himself of course fled

He being born in Great Barrington

Became a citizen of Ghana

As a member of the Communist Party of the USA

In exile

At least that’s how I remember it

From my days as student activist in the 1960s

(Never a leader; just a camp follower in a white 1956 Ford Fairlane convertible

(Thunderbird Police Interceptor Motor; black and white upholstery

(Already had beautiful Grace Kelly lookalike as a gf)

But that’s another story

When Martin and Malcolm were shot

Don’t forget tho

No one influenced Du Bois more than Hegel

Or MLK neither

I say this as someone

With double consciousness

Maybe no veil

As I see it anyway

Would love to talk with Dr. DuBois about it

He and Dr. Sun Yat Sen

Founder of the Republic of China

Therefore in China there is Sun Yat Sen University

both caught on with Hegel

In London England

in the late nineteenth century

Who’s Hegel??

His birthday coming up

August 27, 1770

My father’s eloquent defence of the denizens

Of the Ottawa Emergency Shelters

Led to what follows

Dad’s activism caught the attention of two mutually antagonistic organizations, the Communist Party of Canada and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Thanks to his work as a spy for the RCMP we were able to abandon the Shelters for what my mother called “a cold-water flat” on the third floor of a frame apartment building in a working-class Ottawa neighbourhood. “Ted, David and I,” reflects my mother,

moved to the Emergency Shelter in 1948 after my Father died and I got pregnant for Margaret Elizabeth Louise (Betty) was born January 3, 1949. We didn’t like the Emergency Shelter very much as it had been a barracks for soldiers during the war, so it wasn’t really suitable for families. I was very happy when Ted found a place even though it was a cold water flat, on Arlington Avenue near Bell Street. Ted was now working for Sperry Gyroscope as a driver and we had the station wagon to go out in when he was off duty, just great to take David and Betty out of the apartment. Luckily there was a park nearby where we could play with them.^[1]

Dad was regional distributor of the Communist Party newspaper,The Tribune. Perhaps by coincidence, our apartment was located only a block or two from the Ukrainian Hall run by immigrant members of the Communist Party who had fled Stalin, and Hitler’s invasion of Russia.^[2]

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^[1] My mother never mentions the Communist Party or the RCMP in her Memoirs.

^[2] Our new place was only a few blocks from the Somerset Avenue apartment inhabited by Igor Gouzenko and his family. Although—as usual with what happens in Canada the historical specifics have been forgotten—Gouzenko, a file clerk at the Russian embassy in Ottawa, was the true progenitor of the Cold War, whose exploits inspired Churchill’s Iron Curtain speech in March 1946. Dad was not impressed by the Russian defector whom he knew personally. “He’s a jerk,” my dad laughed one day while we were fishing near our cottage on the Lièvre River in Quebec.

The 1950s the era of the Red Line

I was a child communist who didn’t know he was a phoney

This is wat I call, anyway, double consciousness

I was a child communist for the RCMP

Funny, tho, it’s never left me

Double consciousness

In wat DuBois would call

My pale world

I jump ahead in this poem

To my family in the mid-1950s

We now have a house!!

In a suburban neighbo/urhood

In Ottawa

All the appliances for Bugs Bunny!

Cold Frozen Capital of the Universe

Capitol if you like

The British burned Washington

Where hearts break like ice

I am allocated the beautiful room on the first floor

Very large with slick and shiny hardwood floors

A tree on the lawn through my front window

My second sister isn’t born until 1957

Upstairs is mom and dad

And my sister Betty

In order to pay the mortgage

They take in a communist party bo/arder from Hungary

It’s 1956 honey

Or somewhere like that

And I lose my bedroom

For six months

But this guy is a layabout

Duzn’t pay his rent

And I get my room back

Only to lose it

Only to find Gideon’s Bible

Tim Buck

Leader of the Communist Party of Canada

Some wag with an education in Political Science

Loved the idea

Of a cash dispenser by the CPC [Communist Party of Canada]

Johnny Cash

Named Tim Buck

A boy named Sue

Would sleep in my bedroom during the hottest summer

In Ottawa

When first floor bedrooms are cool

And mom and dad

Have an air conditioner

Sister Betty has her own room

I am sweltering in the upstairs hallway

And Tim Buck

In my room

Why does nothing change?