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“My wife sleep with you/Try & let me know”

By Jerad Gallinger

20090406papepoetry.jpg


Several questions come to mind upon reading the above poem found taped to the window of an east-end home. First, what happened between the author and his wife to solicit this rage-filled verse? Second, are “water skin” and “green head” meant to be insults? And lastly, what do donuts and a family of pigeons have to do with anything?
Unfortunately, other signs apparently penned by the same hand do not provide much clarity: one invites readers to “Blow up this house,” while another labels the domicile as the “First black house on Pape,” an item of local history the accuracy of which is dubious at best.


20090406youboilshit.jpg
Regardless, a second cardboard-mounted poem spotted on the same house last week, entitled “Easy Woo,” proves that this local wordsmith is no one-hit wonder:
You boil shit
I am happy
You carry wok
I am relief
(2 kinds of Woo hi & lo)
(2 [is congruent to] history [is congruent to] his tory [is not equal to] story)
Air milage of Canada
Griffin Prize, here we come!
Photos by Squeakyrat from the Torontoist Flickr Pool.

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  • http://www.nickkozak.com Nick Kozak

    I know one thing that will shed some light on this amazing piece of work. I lived in China and not sure about the rest but wearing a Green hat signifies that your spouse has been cheating on you.
    nick

  • http://www.torontocitylife.com/ torontocitylife

    I think Nick is heading down the right path; these signs look like they were transliterated directly from Chinese into English. Single words in Mandarin or Cantonese are usually syllables, not words. Like Nick points out, wearing a green hat may mean infidelity, but in English it sounds like casual head wear.
    Even the context of the entire page sometimes doesn’t offer a clue as to what it’s about. Not only is the language significantly different in both meaning and structure, but the cultural syntax of the words is completely lost on us.
    The second sign may be a job posting of some sort; who hasn’t carried a wok to boil some shit to relieve someone for $10 an hour?
    At least they’re trying to write English. There’s another great website with such failed attempts: http://engrish.com/
    It is incumbent on us not to jump to any rash conclusions regarding the meaning of such signs (http://www.engrish.com/2007/12/then-say-someone-made-you-do-it/). But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t laugh out loud while pointing!
    http://torontocitylife.com/

  • http://null e3000

    Why is this even on Torontoist? What is it’s relevance? probably should have submitted this to engrish.com or foundmagazine.com instead.

  • http://null loomer_011

    haha, definitely not a job posting! i can’t type it on the computer but being chinese, i can tell you that the first character on the phrase next to “you boil shit” is the feminine form of “you”, so i think it’s still implying some hate for his wife….i can tell you the first three red characters on the first sign mean “Toronto” but I don’t know the rest, sorry that my recognition of the characters is so limited…

  • http://null loomer_011

    reading it again with just the english, i don’t know…it has a poetic bent to me and sorta abstractedly beautiful for some reason.

  • http://undefined rek

    I think these are brilliant, intentional or not.

  • http://zucket.com sass

    Translated as much as I could!
    In the red marker: TORONTO Northern colloquialism of: What’s going on?
    In black marker: 4 variations of duelling/battle fight
    Water skin: Weak/loser
    Green head: Jealousy
    To wear a green hat: A Chinese phrase that signifies a man whose wife is cheating on him
    Second photo:
    Left sign:
    The vertical black writing on the right: Professional Test
    - probably of your Chinese skill. Hence the truncated “Pro-Test”
    Then follows six 2 character phrases that are all almost homophonic “Jing zi” but with varying definitions:
    Good governance
    Politics
    Fix words
    Fix warts
    Cleansing
    Righting hemorrhoids
    Right sign:
    Boil shit: Cause trouble
    I’m happy
    You carry ‘wok’: You take the responsibility
    I’ll be relieved.
    ‘Woo’ is actually a last name but a pun for riddle. Not poems per se.
    Someone is probably pissed about infidelity and broadcasting via cryptic literal translated Cantonese.

  • Jerad Gallinger

    Thanks for the Cantonese insight, everyone!

  • http://www.torontocitylife.com/ torontocitylife

    It looks like it might be exactly what Jerad thought at the top :) Now if we could only get some names…

  • http://undefined rek

    I hope this makes it into the “Elsewhere ist” thing at the end of the week.

  • http://null ukelele

    This guy sounds totally unhinged and is the kind of guy I’d suspect is at risk of killing his wife. Putting up a sign on the door proclaiming that she’s an adultress is pretty extreme. Imagine if someone did this in English in your neighbourhood.
    Given the translations above, you could read this as:
    Here’s a riddle (woo)
    I believe my wife cheated on me; I am jealous (green hat)
    Weak Loser (either the man or his wife’s lover)
    Her story does not match up with His story
    She made the bed, she will lie in it (boil shit / carry wok)
    I’m happy
    I’ll be relieved
    Sounds kind of threatening, no?

  • http://null ukelele

    The first sign has the word pigeon & dove, deconstructed as “pig end, pigs can fly, do-over”. Pigeons & doves in Cantonese can colloquially refer to “snobbishness”.
    (maybe like peacocks in English?)
    “2 kinds of woo”: woo means “riddle”, woo also means “pursue romantically”

  • http://undefined Jerad Gallinger