In the book’s first set, ‘Lowdown’, there is both meanings of the word; a circumstance that is mean and unfair, and a collection of work that is true, factual and relative information. We are presented with images of place and character, portraits or vignettes with their faded shadowy borders. We enter into a Charles Mingus “Weird Nightmare” in one of the dialectic traditions of blues and jazz, that of suffering and loss. Similar to a Mingus composition, the lyrics of D.B. Cox make us stretch the instrument; they rattle our cages, haunt us with their words. Nomads, panhandlers, hustlers, beats, magicians, hobos, bikers, street preachers, the love-lost and lonely, drunks, cabbies, and street hookers move through a weird, shadowy landscape of bus depots, sad cafes, Winnebago-clogged highways, rundown hotels, irrelevant billboards, tombstone parking meters, faded street lights, desolate avenues, empty greyhounds, drunk tanks, last chance motels, day-rooms and the back alleys of the homeless.

In the opening poem “house of cards” we are introduced to the images that pervade the collection; the “whiskey-laced voice”, the “homeless magician”, the “tired faces”, the “sad café sign”, “the shattered house of cards”. Here a congregation is ready to be taken in one last time “before the last/bus leaves/the station.” There is a loss of magic where characters are just “getting by”. In “getting by” subway travellers hang their heads, move in a “tangled dance” and are metaphorically “tossing dead birds/into the air/trying to make them fly”. There is “white noise”, the assembly-line rolling out of the subway, the subterranean world where there is blindness, faces that do not see or want to see the misery, pretending they have magic while they are covering their eyes and merely getting by.

In “motor-head” a portrait of Harley-bikers struggling to find a little space, we find the American dream of the open spaces, wind in your hair “easy rider” clogged by “caravans/of migrating/winnebagos”. This vignette is a Kerouac sketch full of the urgency to escape, to be unconfined, to find a bit of the madness for the open road, “last- gasp america” but this quest is an illusion; it is a landscape “opening/like an old newspaper”. The dream is crumbling. These are “motor-head misfits/with keys to the highway/searching for/the last exit/to better days”.

Similarly in “hotel abracadabra” the magic is gone for the down-and-out, street preacher who questions the meaning of “the whole/cross-dragging parade”. In “beat” a disillusioned beat-generation poet with a copy of William S. Burroughs' ‘Naked Lunch’ in his pocket, and a brown-paper bag of cheap sweet wine reminisces on the “beat-inflicted bullshit/rust-covered voices howling” while strolling to the bus depot to watch a 3 a.m. greyhound pull out for the coast empty. In “billboard savior” hobos subsist under the smiling face of Dr. Phil. It is a sad ironic lament that the clear pixels of his media talk show can’t or won’t help them. In “american business card” the card is ironically a wrinkled cardboard “out of work” sign at the side of a down-and-out panhandler with hollow eyes squinting through the diesel fumes at the bus depot. This not the card of wealth and property, but this is the card of a large portion of desperate America that doesn’t even have the fare to make a break for it on “the pitchless hum/of an idling greyhound”.

In “friday night in the drunk tank” the lines

“another friday night
in the city jail
for trying to make something

out of the emptiness
that crawls along
this boulevard
of half-remembered things”

In the ‘Lowdown’ set despite the lamentations for this loss, there is an electric energy of cutting loose and being alive amid the sorrow and the futility. D.B. Cox says “let’s go down/to the ‘cobra club’”, play the juke box, drink bourbon, play 8 ball, texas hold’em, “gamble with loaded dice”, “ride hell-bent/ on night’s pale horse”, “ruffle each other like/we’ve done a hundred/times before”, be alive and let these moments last forever “and pray the sun/won’t come up tomorrow”.

Lastly in “waiting”, the final piece in the set, Donnie screams for an explanation “anything/other than the empty/echo of my own/voice”. For many the waiting room is a “corner room/windows closed/doors bolted” full of worn-out songs, lost dreams, “rotting back alley trash” where the crossroad choices flip from dark to light to dark again. But Cox’s waiting room is “note to note/line to space/phrase to phrase” where he performs, asks questions, shouts, screams, sings and waits for answers. This is his “repetition of a song” eloquently played out like the notes from a saxophone.

In the second set of the collection, ‘Passing For Blue’ we pick up this repetition but the delivery and the relative facts have changed. Here we find portraits, tributes, elegies, laments, and nostalgic journeys infused with the energy of jazz and the blues.

The opening poem “repetition of a song” says

“take me
to a place
where midnight
accumulates”

“where nighttime
lasts forever”

“sax-man’s loaded
drifting on a silver string.”

“i’m gonna paint
my windows black
as foster-grants
and go to bed forever.”

The dead-end road in the form of the suicide of famous heroes is also explored in “no more mornings” and “krypo-night”. In the former, Hemingway facing one morning after another, worn out from writing blows his head away, and in the latter, George Reeves of early superman fame, “too fucked-up to fly” “pulls the trigger”. These two vignettes portray the actual final ending of these larger than life individuals but they also symbolize a tragic loss of things which were once held in high esteem; that free spirit of America’s creative force and the comic book hero figure able to “leap tall buildings with a single bound”.

‘Empty Frames’ is a powerful performance, a rapid train ride, a jazz riff that slams us about our cages. The music of the words is haunting, rhythmical, and totally absorbing. The notes take us on a “weird nightmare” and hold us nostalgically yearning for

“a slow ride
through an unfolding
summer paradise
always inching
toward the sun
back when time
was on our side.”

David Fraser lives in Nanoose Bay, on Vancouver Island. He is the founder and editor of Ascent Aspirations Magazine since 1997. His poetry and short fiction have appeared in over 40 journals including Three Candles, Regina Weese, Ardent, and Ygdrasil. He has published a collection of his poetry, Going to the Well (2004), a collection of short fiction, The Dark Side of the Billboard (2006)and edited and published Ascent Aspirations Magazine Anthology One(Dec. 2005) , and Ascent Aspirations Magazine Anthology Two Windfire, and Anthology Three, <"http://www.ascentaspirations .ca/aapublishing.htm"> AguaTerra. A second collection of poetry, 'Running Down the Wind' will appear in spring 2007. David is currently the BC Federation of Writers Regional Director for The Islands Region .