“I thought that I wanted to bring some light into that tremulous void,” he says, “the darkness that has fallen on the bridge as the result of those suicides.” -Revington
Luminous, how it seems,
Actuality a victim of subjectivity,
Beholding eyes,
Hopelessness is dangerous,
Yet normative, intense,
These Judas streets,
Disturbed,
There are so many
Quiet-pained-bodies,
Troubled,
Push and pull,
A chase ends up at
Great heights,
An invisible race,
Penetrating and apparent,
Quiet-pained-bodies
Propelled, not by motivation,
Driven mad in the lonely
Crux of sorrow,
The hard hands of
Uncaring cold societal
Pockets,
A figure gaping open
On a bridge, tableau,
That Edward Munch Scream
Silenced in 2D, painting
The image of a human,
Stalked,
Relentless pursuit,
Suicide is reprieve from the
Torture of the repentance
That those Munch Screams
Could not receive,
Quiet-pained-bodies,
So loud inside,
The dark creeps in,
Takes up residence,
They can only function
From feeling that
Soul wants to separate
From those
Quiet-pained-bodies,
To lift off and fly
Away like a bird
Without a cage,
Yet,
These Judas streets,
Crowded, restless spirits,
Haunted,
These urban boroughs
Are ghosted,
Ravines and viaduct,
Abducted.
____
Haunting took place
Before they jumped,
Bloor Viaduct, portal,
Transitory relief
From a grim reality
That demons imitate
The dead long before
Soul and body
Separate
On that bridge.
____
Harris and his bridge,
There he is,
Contained inside the
Frames of a
Photographic series,
Methodological,
Architecture and nation-building,
Deliberately poured
Layers, non-accidental,
He is not sedimentary,
A ‘city-building visionary,’
‘genius,’ his plan,
Progress and completion,
An industrial beacon.
____
Writer sees
Immigrant men,
Juxtaposition,
Clean pressed shirt
Poses, rolled-up
Gripped canvas,
Black brimmed hats,
Neatly standing
With rugged ravine views
In the back
Ground through
Unforgiving blueprints,
Sunburnt men with
tired earthen faces,
Sweat-glazed and lifting,
Shovel and wheelbarrow,
They’ve come from
Smoke-filled kitchens
Of stubborn wives
Talking about the crowds,
They need functioning
Sewage systems,
Clean water,
Instead of a bridge.
Writer does not see
A photographic series
For the city administration
From the perspective of the men,
Sacrificing and victim
To the birth of that bridge,
Where are the faces of those
Who died on the job?
Outside the frame a widow
Weeps, the deceased walks home,
Alone, his life design
Realized in the pages of a novel.
____
A community,
They are a community,
Imagine 600 people standing
at once on that bridge.
I see different numbers,
400 to 600,
even 400 people is too many,
all nameless, their memory lost,
I would try and find every person’s story,
Build a publication for them,
Their lives braided together, separate,
An anthology,
Their history, the architecture of
A wounded city.
____
Harris makes a home
On his iconic creation,
He needs to face them,
Each one, as they come
And jump off,
The reality of his life work
Must contain these
Gruesome scenes,
So, he remains,
A captain gone down with
His ship, Titanic,
The Bloor Viaduct,
A magnet for suicide,
A bridge to death,
400 to 600 suicides by
2003, he holds his
Face in his hands
Registering the facts,
the second fatal
structure in North America,
first the Golden Gate Bridge,
second his,
1 person every 22 days,
He wanted to catch the child
In 1957 who fell walking
Along the railing,
Harris makes a home there,
The full scope of these visions
Drives him insane.
____
“I look forward to the days of bad weather because the movement of light will be exquisite,” he said. “I imagine people will identify with its mood swings.” -Revington
The veil appears alive, artery,
Sensitive and flowing with environment,
Bad weather marked by hues,
Soundwaves, synesthesia,
Toronto is not a romantic city,
Icy and emotional, Lake Ontario,
Haloed by an unforgiving shield,
Homogenous concrete skyscrapers,
Crown of thorns,
Removed, the change of winds, netted,
Fluctuating temperatures, webbed,
Time is measured by light,
Sunrise and sunsets,
The veil lives through seasons,
Aquatic greens and blues,
Summer is on fire, orange and pink,
The people are divided
By geography, by opinion,
Jungle ravines, bluffs and cliffs,
Bowstring masts perceived as
Christian crosses, discrete memorials,
Stone slabs, tomb markers,
Language is used to help a population heal,
Barrier or band aid, veil or curtain,
Life is a cable walk between life and death,
Ethereal and living,
There is a conversation between
Historic designers, immigrant hands,
The need to feel out transcendence and pain,
Compassion, a veil existing in multiple planes,
In plain sight, sympathetic cross-hairs,
Void and viaduct, her terrain flattened
By glacial melting, a tumultuous shaping,
deep fissures, healed wounds,
Character,
“San Francisco turned upside down,”
Where literature is born, where
Quiet-pained-bodies go to die.
____
People and places
Thinly veiled,
Heat spots in oceans,
Cratered fabric
Throws between
Earth and spirit,
Amongst a manifold,
Thin, the inside of an elbow,
Membrane, the back of a knee,
Where worlds
Encounter each other,
Overlap, a wave falling
Back into the sea,
A shoreline left darker
Where it was touched,
Duality is channel,
Night and day,
Rock and sand,
Sky and mountain,
Ravine,
Stream cutting, erosion,
Spirit runs through.
____
Collective conscious
Knows that a ‘gust of wind
Blew a nun off the bridge before
She was scooped up in midair by
A construction worker suspended on a rope.’
The Luminous Veil, suspended,
Elegance, grace has returned,
Catching those
Quiet-pained-bodies,
Suicide is expensive,
One jump could cost the community $849,000,
Healthcare, ambulance and investigation,
Autopsies and funerals,
Indirectly stalling capital accumulation for
A moment, prolonged and painful,
Some want to get to
The root of the problem,
Antecedent conditions,
Public health is important,
Vulnerable communities are expensive,
Defacement and disruption,
Metonym, a city’s current state,
The viaduct a proud signature,
The veil a reality check for how
Toronto feels,
“I just reached through the barrier,
put him in a bear hug,
and grabbed around behind his body,”
It takes almost an hour to keep one
Quiet-pained-body aloft,
Lifted from falling,
Humanitarian levitation,
The veil a life-vest in a freezing
Iceberged ocean,
Leverage is gained,
The people can start to get a grip,
A handle on this situation.