and now here i am
writing poetry about you
in tim hortons
i've sunk this low
may as well keep going
extend the metaphor
except
we are not symbolic
we are real
or at least my mind thinks we were
and i'm usually right
so
who are you to say i'm wrong?
except you didn't
you just didn't say anything
and that's what makes me think
i should be somewhere else
somewhere other than this table
growing green with moss and envy
bending over time and time again
to pick up that lucky penny
polishing it off and adding it to my pocket
saving up for another drink
so i can buy more time
waiting around
for another chance encounter with you
that i know won't amount to anything
but hey
i can try can't i?
i have that right and i use it
abuse it
and all for what?
here i am sitting at a table for two
and you?
you're somewhere else
like you've always been
never there in front of me
except when passing me by
giving me the eye
or
did i just imagine it?
i think i know what i'm talking about
but my predictions all put me in the same place
sitting here with a cup in front of me
slowly emptying
but never all the way
because i still say i've got time to wait
my watch is wrong
some excuse
to go along with my own stupid games
playing the lottery and losing
but each small compensation lifts me up
i'm so hopeful one day it's gonna **** me
and i'll die here
in tim hortons
with my cold coffee sitting in front of me
saying
i told you so
you should've finished me when you had the time!
and i'll know
i should've finished us when i had the time
maybe then we never would have been like this
skirting around each other
all awkward smiles
cold coffee
warmed up
is never the same as when it's fresh

I saw you in Tim Hortons for the first time in three years.
You told me I had grown and
I congratulated on you on your weight loss.


She is my best friend.
You didn't raise a child,
You raised an ironwork frame.
You threw a girl into reality before she could even spell the word.

And I would love to look at the other side, but I can't—
it always loops back around like that little girl
doing circles around on her ten-speed as she pulls up
to the convenience store to buy you cigarettes.

Hey, at least you called her an ambulance—
On Thanksgiving Day when she passed out
from lack of nutrition because you spent your last welfare check
on something I don't even want to hear your excuse for.

I remember my mother, coming into my room at eleven pm on a Wednesday, telling me to put some shoes on because you snapped a pool cue and placed it to a guy's neck.

My pajama pants ripped as I broke into your apartment to wake my best friend up and tell her that my mom was parked outside and she had to spend the night at my house.

You spent the night in the drunk tank hitting on officers.
She spent the night beside me crying and asking for any other mother but you.

We were in grade 6.

When she was 13, she had to live with me for 3 months because social services deemed you, "unstable."
When she was 14, she moved away to the city because she couldn't handle you anymore.

I went to visit her last weekend and she didn't say a single word about you.

The dusk smells like the dank moldy parts of the basement, old and decrepit. The days are short, like lives of butterflies. Only stray cats roam the streets after dusk like men in trench coats looking for your children. This is where the buzz of sports games fights through voices like car accidents, wafting through the air with the liquor that fuels them. The mix of rotting seaweed flesh and burnt cheerios intoxicates the wharf, drunker then the teens in their parent’s basements. Anyone can tell you where every **** store and Tim Hortons lies, where bass and basket ***** echo in the roads of chicken wings and blizzards. ‘Beautiful River’ you are where the hearts are strong as bison and tongues sharper then sabers. Yet among the old eyesores you'll find the hope of a city. It screams through the rusty and cracked windows; negligence made mosaics. Based on a pride that runs deeper then it's waters, the strength of those who reside in this urban Crayola box crown and shine like the tips of the waves cascading past the falls.

and the streets breathed
as crows rose and took the sky
crying in anguish.

..
Mouth full of semi-raw fried potatoes and
dehydrated orange wheels, doesn't Mr. Appleseed come out of
nowhere
and plant a speck of a seed right smack dab in the centre of my
reptilian cortex, but I
pay no mind because Buddy has adored me for a whole five minutes until he rebounds
              harder
                        than an
                                    addict discharged
                                                    fr­om
                                                        forest-y­ methadone clinics
                                                        i­n downtown cores
                                                        pop­pin' Hilfiger blue collars
                                                        y­ackin' it on the phones to guys named D, or
                                                        D yackin' it to guys named Friendo, Jai, or
                                                        Little­ Tim,
                                                        buri­ed from ******* back too much hillbilly
                                                       ­ ******, while
                                                        col­lege girls sleep in their Sahara beds,
                                                        sav­ing up to buy bouncy trampolines with
                                                        boun­cy cheques,
                                                        ­listening to lullaby coos of pimps and ******
                                                        on­ the downstairs couch,
                                                        ga­zing fawn-eyed at cavediums next to
                                                        nobody cares muffins and syrup-y coffee
                                                        canyoudropmeoff?
                                             ­           outside of the seventh-story window of
                                                        million dollar saloons,
                                                        ­wearing blings and rings,
                                                        purchase­d by wealthy husbands and
                                                        travelin­g yuppies for their wives' veneer,
                                                        eating breakfast cereals that go
                                                        Snap! Crackle! Pop!
                                                        for three square meals,
                                                        re­furbishing plastic containers
                                                        on foot-stained broadloom,
                                                        with cage and cagey roommates,
                                                        throwing life rafts to bloated bodies in
                                                        Great Lakes
                                                        for the price of a debt,
                                                        recalling waffling road trips,
                                                        visiting one-man tents behind billowing
                                                        smokestacks;
                                                        I blew my brains out in an air duct,
                                                        lost my life lifting up heavy floor mattresses,
                                                        climbing out of basement windows,
                                                        while hitch hiking mothers sing karaoke
                                                        nursery rhymes by Janis Joplin,
                                                        20 notes off-key,
                                                        harboring skeletons in stairwells and rusted
                                                        out Grand Ams,
                                                        making friends in Tim Hortons after last call,
                                                        dressed in leprechaun fatigue,
                                                        driving like England at midnight,
                                                        I spoke to a faceless man,
                                                        whom I'll never get a chance to send a
                                                                ­               thank you
                                                       card...
                                                       as for me? I never touched the stuff

but I was too spent to care and was already floating on cheap Chardonnay and authentic vitamin D with my bindle stuffed to the brim so I thought I'd just American Beauty plastic bag my way through this one, cropped in floral, patio sunglasses, swirling and twirling on Ballet Boulevard until
An e.ch-o-y sound in my
left  ear
I turned my head,
slo-mo tracers flashed in warp speed,
        the testa bursts open.
..

Just be the **** ****** you desire
Just be their icon, diva, vogue, inspire!
Just shake that money-making waffle tale
And put it up for every market sale
Or be the coffee squirrel on the wheels
Just give me mochas, lattes – those the deals!
Don’t be so easy cheesy, take a shot!
You drink at Hortons’, baby? You are hot!
Don’t feel like ******, squirrel? Be the moose!
Hang out at Lake Louise with Branta goose
Just grab a Molson and then chill it out
Now, isn’t that what Canada’s about?
Just be polite today and I won’t bite
Just say you’re sorry when you are not right
Just be the polar teddy, be the loon
We’ll love you all the way from Earth to Moon

look at me
keep looking
i didn't say to look away
look right
now look left
now look inside that tim hortons at the person in the flannel jacket eating chili with buttered bread (love chili)
now look back at me
look at my shoes
now look into my eyes
you just checked me out
look as deep as when eyeing the unmixed sugar in the bottom of your coffee mug, too far to get your fingers on....
keep reaching....fixed at the bottom
look away.....
just know
i'm still looking at you

Late spring when the sparrows sang again
Ants make invisible trails across my legs, normally I would mind but they're moving steadily along their way.
Wind blowing my hair in every direction
Showing me grey I haven't really noticed before
My age spots, proof that youth is fading outwards.
Freshly brewed coffee from the Tim Hortons down the street.
A vice if you will
Something that often brings me comfort but can amp my anxiety into overdrive.
I drink the coffee anyways.
Strong aroma of freshly cut grass, the first cut of the season.
Lilac bushes with a hint of the unmistakable scent of fresh air.
Everything has sprung alive, which I am quite thankful for.
Yet I feel somber.
So many thoughts flow through my mind in a day, an abundance of questions and unanswered emotions.
Through age and maturity has taught me that I no longer wish to seek the aproval of strangers for I need not impress anyone but myself.
Yet I had hoped that growth and forgiving others had meant I too along the way would be forgiven for the actions of my former, younger self.
Sitting here opening my heart to the universe,  continuing to be the best I can be and to grow.
Looking inward, and attempt to seek out the approval I didn't have when I was a child.
I am nothing but myself.