Damaged: Poems

Phlip Arima is one of Toronto's most popular performance poets. In this second collection of poetry, Arima takes to the street to create his portraits of the lost, the dispossessed and the disenchanted. Edgy, yet deeply compassionate, Arima's poems capture the gritty urban reality of the homeless and the mad, in desperate contrast to the easy slogans of TV ads and store window displays. His question remains, "What happened to make them this way?" At the heart of this powerful collection is an extended poem, '09-06-96, Eulogy for Chris', a bittersweet memoir of a friend and lover, filled with grief and anger at her loss. But there have been other suicides, other deaths -- from AIDS, from drugs, and from sheer loneliness. Powered by an internal rhythm as strong as the human heart beat, Arima's poems are packed with images of the streets and of cold city nights, relived only occasionally by a tender moment of love.