Walking down the concrete
At the witching hour’s peak.
Heavy with twilight.
The rain for the day
Has lifted and the air is warm.
Walking down the concrete
At the witching hour’s peak.
Heavy with twilight.
The rain for the day
Has lifted and the air is warm.
I float down the concrete.
Biting on an apple,
Chewing over
The previous night.
Beer,
Steak,
Condos on Front Street;
Financed by taxed poker winnings.
The sun beats down
With bated baton
Upon a North York community.
Rattling the Black Walnut tree
Which peppers the back canopy
With meaty green seed.
Tables with serviette stations stand
Spaced apart, like livestock grazing linoleum.
The atmosphere is Easter and will be for the next month.
No matter what’s ordered-
The price is around $5.85.
Moving on varicose veins,
Vision tipped with red billed visors,
Dusted in flour, selling Lotto tickets and cigarettes,
The women behind the counter
Could be any body’s grandmother.
Two televisions play soaps and soccer.
An elderly, male audience;
Scratching tickets, drinking Sumol,
Consuming caffeine of heated espresso bean.
I order a black drip and Pasteis de Nata to fit in,
Then reveal my Macbook Pro.
Peer into Davenport, through steel roller shutters
Plants that hardly need water obscure
A riotous display of motorcars and humans.
CASH ONLY.
The ATM: The heart and soul.
Electrically alive;
The only polished gem.
Built from sole to brow
On egg, salt, sugar, and flour;
Portuguese pastry, deli meat, and cheese.
Duplicate chocolate cereal boxes
Live in spare real estate.
I see no harm in it.
A man who looks homeless begs cup of coffee from the barista.
She obliges without a word or coin exchanged.
The vice won’t turn him into an abomination,
Water costs nothing in the business.
It’s a gold mine disguised as a salt pile.
Don’t think fiction, just look up and type.
Amongst the 25 cent candy, tattoo, toy machines
Amongst age that lived everything I have learned.
They sit in their leather jackets and Scally caps.
Cigarettes in their front pockets,
Index finger in an espresso mug’s loop.
I sit with white iPod EarPods,
Soaking my perception in underground hip-hop.
iPhone on my hip,
Spliff folded in wallet, tucked in back pocket.
We stand up and depart,
Decades apart.
Electricity sprays through my veins
I maintain this same ink stain-
A mundane selfless act
Of writing my thoughts.
I light another cigarette-
Watch the embers flick
Flash turns into ash
Smoke turns to my breath.
The Walrus said:
The time has come-
You fell from grace and
I just wanted a small taste.
As we skip along this
Redbrick Road-
Viewed by topographical vantage points
Step on a crack
Shatter your Mother’s facts.
Like the sidewalk’s weeds-
Peeking for the slightest hint
Of Vitamin D
Crevices spell the initials
Of love-sick Scarecrows.
Abstract ink bleeds
Like mascara streaks-
Only the cowardice in the Lion knows
This ink is the doubt that grows.
Condensation of lust soaked skin
A sticky situation when
There’s no lubrication for the Tin Man.
In the pulmonary arteries
Of the Hemingway Reincarnates
Rhythmic typewriters click-
Splashing ink into nonsense.
Summerhyme in humid air
Bleeds the present into past tense
And while we all wait-
The tides will undertow us
Away with the wake.
He opened eyes to a deep ocean blue,
Knew it was time for the sublime.
The birds called his name
And the same came from the sun.
She was the one.
Beside his pillow,
She winked a furrowed brow,
Whispered a soft growl.
Interlocked fingers, overlapped lips,
Eyes locked, and tongues dancing.
Time passing too fast to savor the moment.
They were told to stop and smell the roses,
Weary of the pricking thorns.
Over caffeinated and under stimulated
They begged for more.
Forlorn on the shore
Of lifetime memory.
Opening their mouths to speak,
Cracking a smile,
Laughing away time,
Falling in love with eternity.
Forever seemed too soon;
Tomorrow too far.
Stolen kisses and weighed words,
Speaking in similar tongues
But missing the subtext.
She caressed his neck
Whispered “What comes next?”
His answer: “Don’t come too soon”.
They fell into a monsoon.
The mascara streamed from her eyes,
They kissed in the driving rain.
Drowned the cries:
Of the screaming city.
Still on their midnight run,
When up came the sun.
Red skies at night
Sailor’s take warning.
Avoid the sirens and incessant mourning.
Those who came before,
Those who were still to become.
The starlight twinkles while
Smiles break into molecules
Of eternal black matter.
The concrete
Streets were as
Cold as the weather.
April was
A month of
Rain and mud.
I walked down
The sidewalk
Shopping for
IMAGES.
IMAGES.
Screaming, at the streetcar stop.
Clinging to the train, posted to lamp posts.
Written in jet fuel on a blue canvass sky.
Pecking in the grass and plastered, wind-rippling, to a chain fence.
Chalked to windows, floating about the man-made floor.
IMAGES.
Flashing provocatively
Like badges upon
The fire crowned girl’s-
Green summer jacket.
Whose fingers link mine.
I try to avert
My eyes from those ads
Right when she smiles.
Dodging the wrong shell
To my beating heart.
I come eye to eye
With the pavement
And the trash I tread over
And my own images
I follow the commercials to
A store around the corner,
Dubiously dubbed:
CORNER STORE.
I tinkle a coin
Into a stubbled,
Down trodden man’s
Raggy-glad tin coffee cup.
While he preaches
From a sewer pulpit.
I step in-
The doorway.
Shopping for
IMAGES.
A man stands before a
Wall of silver buyer beware doors.
There were plenty of
People purchasing
At seven p.m.
Adolescent school girls
Flocking around the sugar
Amorously eyeing
Multi-colored, candied keys.
Some buzzed professionals
In the Miss Vickie’s.
A lone yoga instructor
In the XXX water.
Godmothers in the
old avocados
an unintentional prop
affirming that the
store has everything.
And, is that you?
Allen Ginsberg?
By the shake N bake? A peephole?
Eyeing the ladies licking keys?
Or the narcotic tobacco?
Over Ginsberg’s gaze
through the Shake N Peep
I spot the wayward
Grizzled man step in.
Swinging his tin cup.
His grey beard points down
Empty offerings.
Three sixty-five,
A bottle cap with
A cigarette smoked
Half, puckered and brown.
WHITMAN LUMBER
Is printed on the coat,
Hunkered shoulders.
An ironed felt badge
Over his heart tagged:
WALLY.
The overseer of the register
Tongs him a sweating dog
From the grease splattered green house.
He wipes the coins and butt
Back into his cup
And leaves gumming
Into that frozen wind.
I dash, bumping my voyeur mate
Spilling pasta and toilet paper
The sense, the senses, the sensations!
I banged through, the door jangled
Hoping the sound caught
That grizzled man.
I was only in the cool city.
Wind swirling with a
Whisper of snow.
The unnatural trees poked
Through their allotted plots
In the concrete as though
They chose to grow there.
Where are we going?
WALT WHITMAN
Where are we going?
My single Americano
Spins towards me in a white cup
Atop a white saucer.
The classic simile
As to what a coffee should be.
Spoon-less,
Black,
And sugar free.
Accentuated by the small, looped handle.
Mimicking hands, whirling
A face of numbered time.
Just above Bellwoods
At Dundas and Shaw.
Near where Sammy Yatim
Was gunned down by the law.
Scrawled through osmosis
Upon the bricks
Of the Lucky fruit convenience
Is this:
Watch Your step or you may fall.
The wall is littered
With peeling plaster
And fluttering confederate flags
Of promotional entertainment rags.
The basement washrooms
Of trendy booze monsoons
End in harsh stone slabs
And unfinished corridors.
A sign at eye level bawls:
WATCH YOUR STEP, OR YOU MAY FALL.
All in all,
It was a good summer.
Autumn has come in Early August.
All the drunks remark on the wind chill.
Leaning, in cold brick alcoves.
Huddled around that winking cigarette.
Made sweeter by the cold breath,
Ramrod chasing that burning powder,
Shot, and lead bullet
Into the cul-de-sacs
Of their chest cavities.
They don’t remark on this.
They cough rolling thunder
And spit black matter
Onto the concrete ladder,
Stretching for blocks beneath your feet.
Grumbling: “Watch your step or you may fall”.