Not that long ago while in a bar on Queen Street I met a middle-aged guy who told me he was a Slam Poet. Not that surprisingly, he was alone and drunk, and in no time he was offering to share some of his work with me. He leaned toward me, his eyes slight glassy, blinked twice as if to compose himself and then launched into his poem. And yes, he sported a soul patch and a pork pie hat.
Although he forgot the words to his work several times, and paused awkwardly, I watched attentively, trying to fashion a look of encouragement and receptivity on my face.
“I met you in the ads?
A blonde bombshell from Latvia?
Your name was Tatjana?
like Tijuana, Botswana, Marijuana”
And then he stopped and weaved a little on his bar stool. I wasn’t sure if he was finished or had just forgotten the lyrics again, but decided to applaud and put an end to it, which I did. This made him very grateful, and when I offered to buy him a drink I had a slurry, best friend for the next hour.
“Italy, man, my Nonno lives in Rome!” he pumped his fist like he had just scored a goal, “When you and your lady get there on your honeymoon, you should look him up. He’s fucking awesome, he was the Bocce Ball champion of the whole country back in the late 60’s!”
This seemed like divine providence to me, as a friend and I have been planning on starting up a Bocce Ball league in Toronto this summer and I wanted to learn as much as I could so I could dominate. The Slam Poet wrote all of his grandfather’s information down in my notebook.
I met this man in a park in Rome near the Tiburtina metro stop. He was in his late 80’s, was wearing a sharp Fedora and sitting on a bench trying to roll a cigarette. I introduced myself and he nodded. After a little bit of chat he said, “My grandson, you saw, he is black.”
I nodded.
“My son had affair with an African and his wife was so furious that the baby from this union was never allowed to grow-up knowing his brothers and father’s family, but was raised alone by his natural mother. Now as grown man he drinks too much, the wounds of childhood, they last forever.”
He handed me the cigarette he had been trying to roll.
“I have arthritis in my hands now, from years of Bocce Ball. Will you roll this for me, please?”
I tried to roll his cigarette, but it ended up all thick and lumpy with little bits of tobacco sticking out of each end.
The man whistled and shook his head, chuckling. “No, no, no, you need very nimble fingers to play Bocce Ball and you do not have nimble fingers. There is nothing I can teach you. I must go in now, it is time for my pill. When you get back to Toronto, tell Joseph that I love him.”
And then he walked away.