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    Saint Grotesque of the Subway
    Saint Grotesque of the Subway
    Saint Grotesque of the Subway
    Ebook54 pages48 minutes

    Saint Grotesque of the Subway

    By Lenny Everson

    ()

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    About this ebook

    A man with an indigo guitar lived in the church basement, at least for the winter. One day he met a woman at a coffee place. Or maybe she found him, his indigo guitar, and his church-basement sanctuary, that cold November night. She made only one promise: that she would stay until the first crocus of spring. During that time, they made a collection of their musings on topics for poems or songs that would probably never be written. This is their collection of those “Thoughts That are not Poems.”

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherLenny Everson
    Release dateSep 7, 2017
    ISBN9781370243471
    Saint Grotesque of the Subway
    Author

    Lenny Everson

    List of Completed Works by Lenny Everson (As of November, 2014, over 36,000 copies of Lenny's works have been downloaded.) Novels •Death On a Small, Dark Lake. 67,700 words. Our hero snags a body in a remote lake. •Death on a Rocky Little Island 71,500 words. Our hero convinces a friend to take a canoeing trip to the 30,000 islands. •Mount Moriah 50,000 words. A strange sequence events involves a priest, a poet, a CSIS agent, a space alien, four horny teens, among others. My most fun fiction. •Last Exit to Pine Lake. 45,000 words. A dying writer goes back into the bush to off himself. Grimly literary. My best fiction. •Ally Oop Through the Ulysses Trees. As much fun as Mount Moriah! •Marley Was Dead: A Christmas Carol Mystery Novelettes •Granite and Dry Blood. 9,700 words. Our hero wants to write a book on Massassauga Park. Various people would prefer that he didn’t. •Death on a Foggy Spring Portage. 11,800 words. One member of a paddling group is found dead on a muddy portage. Screenplays •Murder on a Foggy Spring Portage. One member of a paddling group is found dead on a muddy portage. Plays •Louis Riel and Gabriel Dumont. Ghosts of the two Métis leaders meet in today’s world to remember their lives. A short (20-minute) play for two actors. Full-Length Poetry Books •The Minor Odyssey of Lollie Heronfeathers Singer. A middle-aged woman tries to connect with her aboriginal ancestry. •In The Tavern of Lost Souls. Four poets meet at a grungy bar once a month to give their poetic answers to random questions. •Love in a Canoe. A set of five chapbooks and a songbook about the love of canoeing. With illustrations. •Louis Riel and Gabriel Dumont are Dead. Ghosts of the two Métis leaders meet in today’s world to remember their lives. Includes the play. Poetry Chapbooks •Encounter in a Small, Old Cemetery. Autumn. Midnight. Poet visits a small, old private graveyard. Best poem I ever wrote. •Fire and Ashes. Poems about life’s flames and regrets. •The Empty Tarmac of a Long-Abandoned Airport. Poems about having a midlife crisis. •Love Poems A compilation •Pray for Me: 22 Poems Probably Slandering God and Jesus •Ballads from an Unlucky Fisherman: Poems from a fisherman •Tweetable Limericks. 60 limericks small enough to be tweets •Hiking Poems. Co-Authored Poetry Chapbooks •Who Would Be a God? Susan Ioannou and Lenny debate the merits of being a god. •How to Dance Naked in the Moonlight. Katherine L. Gordon (Celtic pagan) and Lenny (skeptic) confront the ceremony. •Cats and Dogs. With I. B. Iskov •For Ko Aye Aung: A Plea for His Release from Prison. For Amnesty International, with other poets. Non-Fiction Chapbooks •If You Condemn Gays: The Bible on Homosexuality and Other Items. •The Architecture of Suburban West Kitchener. A light look at house styles. •The Architecture of The University of Waterloo. A light look at the campus buildings. •Making Tourist Attractions for Towns and Small Cities. Advice. •Technological Solutions to Global Warming. •Hyphens: A Guide for the Early Twenty-First Century. •Colons and Semicolons: A Guide for the Early Twenty-First Century. •How to Review Draft Technical Writings •Rebecca’s Trail (Grand River Trail) in Winter •7 Temples to Bill Gates: a modern mystery •The Great God Pan - or Not •Two in a Tent: Camping Humor. •Why Haven't Aliens Contacted us? Songbooks •Dance Songs for Weddings Available on Smashwords •Canoe Songs. part of a set of six chapbooks about the love of canoeing. With illustrations.. Available on Smashwords •18 Dingbat Songs for Kids Available on Smashwords I’d like to thank all the people who downloaded my writings. And I’d like to thank Smashwords for making them available to the world. I started out as a poet, and spent most of my life producing poems. Some of them are really fine poems, but, of course, the monetary value of poetry in this world isn’t much. Actually, I once calculated poetry has a negative monetary value; poets are lucky if they don’t have to pay people to listen to them. But I always admired people who told me they were “writing a novel.” I don’t know why, but I did. So eventually, I sat down and wrote a novel, just to show I could actually do it. The result was Death on a Small, Dark Lake, more than two thousand copies of which have been downloaded. It wasn’t really very good, but at least I could say, “I wrote a novel!” I stuck to what I knew best, canoeing and the lake country north of Peterborough, Ontario, the edge of Canada’s lake country. I wrote Death on a Rocky Little Island in an effort to make some more believable characters, but I can’t really say I succeeded. People have downloaded a few more copies of that, so maybe it was a bit better constructed than the first novel. It included canoes, of course. Then one of my friends taunted me into doing something for NaNoWriMo, the endeavor in which a person tries to write a 50,000-word novel in the month of November. I was, er, a few days over, but I got it done. It turned out to be a bit incoherent in spots, but in general, a lot of fun; I recommend it, if your standards aren’t too high. And there are no canoes in it. By that time, I figured I could write something “literary.” The result – with more canoes of course – was Last Exit to Pine Lake. If it’s less fun, well, it’s meant to be. If most people don’t like it, well, that’s normal for literary novels, so it doesn’t bother me. My literary bent done, I wrote Ally Oop Through the Ulysses Trees. It was intended to be fun, and it’s lots better than the first two novels I wrote. I even put myself, in a canoe, as a minor character. Then I thought I’d just write a novel that would sell. For money, like. Smashwords said romance generally sold well, so I wrote Fire and Spark, under the name, “Laura Singer.” (You can search for it.) It wasn’t all that bad, for a guy’s first romance novel. Really, it is, although my wife said it should be subtitled, Five Canoes; No Sex. I again added myself as a minor character. But it didn’t sell, so I added it to my list of free books on Smashwords. You’re welcome. Last fall, I finished another book that I thought would actually sell, Marley Was Dead: A Christmas Carol Mystery. My wife thought it was really good, mostly because of the historical details of social life. It didn’t sell, of course, so it’s free now. You’re welcome, again. As for the poetry, the most popular are Hiking Poems and 21 Poems for Love, Weddings, and Anniversaries. And then there’s the rest. The opinion pieces are just my explorations of things that I wanted to know more about. I studied the subject, briefly, and published my findings. They’re not scholarly, but well worth what you’ll pay for them. A few are getting outdated, but nobody’s written to me to ask for updates. If you want to learn more about any of my writings, email me at lennypoet@hotmail.ca. Like Lenny’s poems? Just type in (or copy) the YouTube address) from any item on the list below into your search engine. You should get a YouTube video of Lenny reading a poem. https://youtu.be/SfHAKSgn7lc https://youtu.be/29dmESWIgrg https://youtu.be/hyYqYhDl35E https://youtu.be/x8ufRDD65_s https://youtu.be/u0Bw6xUcEFM n https://youtu.be/g3PxjmjRl1g https://youtu.be/WCmoGGdLrTw https://youtu.be/IIL7e2cWWVA https://youtu.be/SfbwWwgd5Yo https://youtu.be/ZAuuYEUsMh0y https://youtu.be/Hw4v7RmZqk4 https://youtu.be/BmTywRZwe1o https://youtu.be/lYGmMyxgKGQd https://youtu.be/I8tA3dwv-WA https://youtu.be/yaX9WYb2y3o https://youtu.be/Y1Saq1UZ0kE https://youtu.be/FDBlHLuBmcw https://youtu.be/yTiSQLzU4nM https://youtu.be/On8ClcmNWsw https://youtu.be/L3IwGhkqIKMd https://youtu.be/KhOxMvR4wGE https://youtu.be/R6ybqmVUUCA https://youtu.be/BiiYKsR8YaE https://youtu.be/Y9a6pNuEoX0 https://youtu.be/ZyOn3Smu8ZY https://youtu.be/5U0zTnAw7X4

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      Book preview

      Saint Grotesque of the Subway - Lenny Everson

      Saint Grotesque of the Subway

      The Girl and the Indigo Guitar

      Lenny Everson

      rev 1

      Copyright 2017 Lenny Everson

      Smashwords Edition, License Notes

      This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

      Cover design by Lenny Everson

      Published at Smashwords:

      ****

      Chapter 1: The story, in brief.

      A man with an indigo guitar lived in the church basement, at least for the winter. One day he met a woman at a coffee place. Or maybe she found him, his indigo guitar, and his church-basement sanctuary, that cold November night. She made only one promise: that she would stay until the first crocus of spring.

      Notes

      1. If you pay more than 50 cents for this pseudo-gothic quasi-poetic drivel, you need your head or your soul examined. It was not supposed to be written. You can get away with paying nothing (or close to it). If you wish to salve any conscience you have about doing that, send a comment on anything in it you liked to everson@golden.net. In return, you’ll get a poem version of such.

      2. These Thoughts That are not Poems are 392 times as entertaining when read aloud; it is the only time they come to life.

      =======================================================

      Chapter 2: The Too-Brief Narrative

      Winter was striding like the colossus of roads, straddling the trans-Canada across Alberta on diamond shoes and shushing through Manitoba in a wedding gown sleet, driving cars into fields and people into underground malls. Its eyes were fixed on Toronto, where the last of the sunshine faded in the middle of November.

      In Toronto, two people met by no plan of their own in a downtown Tim Hortons coffee shop that wasn’t all that fussy about its clientele, like some of the aging hookers in the surrounding streets and avenues.

      He was a quarter short of adding a muffin to his breakfast.

      She handed a quarter to him, and he bought a carrot muffin. Winter comes to the city, she said. I don’t want to be alone at Christmas.

      I have a sanctuary you can share, he said. It’s in the basement of St. Grotesque of the Subway. That’s what I call it, anyway.

      You have quarters to live in but had no quarter for a muffin?

      I was with running foxes, he said, pursued by crying dogs, crawling through the hedges, hiding under bridges, till I found sanctuary. Warm and dry.

      In a church basement? You share it? With the other homeless at night?

      Alone, he said. He tasted the muffin. Warmer than out there, he said, waving at the window where Homeless Guy Number 8 leaned against a lamp post. And it’s somewhat dryer, although it is a church basement.

      No others?

      He shook his head. A few cellar spiders, maybe, but they mean me no harm. I am a poet, he added. Only the stone angels read my unpublished works. I have song that won’t come free yet, even with my indigo guitar. He smiled. I am with turning moons and shadows on the sky. Come with me and watch the lifetimes go by.

      You have an indigo guitar? she asked.

      I have. What are you?

      She thought, then spoke. I am the last butterfly from Eden. barely out, as the great iron doors slammed closed in a shower of rust. She paused. Does God love you more if you live in a church basement?

      Ah, I had a time, he said. I walked that Lonesome Highway in a previous skin. There were marble floors, and

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