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R Saba Oct 2012
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
tim hortons by the way is a Canadian coffee chain with cheap doughnuts, great place to waste your life writing poetry about people who couldn't care less
September Mar 2013
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.
I think this is the most unrefined thing I have ever posted online. I just kinda wanted to get it off my chest because honestly it's been seething inside me for a long time, and I just recently saw the mother sooooooo..
Shannon McGovern Aug 2011
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.
Julianna Eisner Mar 2014
..
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.
..
mikumiku Apr 2018
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
Yazad Tafti Sep 2019
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
;) :))
softcomponent Feb 2014
take me back
to the era
I spelt

correctly

and
I'll buy
you

a

Tim
Hortons
gift-card

as

thanks
Ameliorate Jun 2016
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.
Chameleon Aug 2016
I feel like Patsy Cline,
walking alone at midnight searching for her love.
Replaying the soundtrack of us over and over in my head.
Having too much fun taking showers together,
laughing our heads off on the couch.
Going for a drive and ending up in our spot overlooking the highway.
Early morning and late night trips to Tim Hortons, Waffle House and IHOP.
Listening to The Beatles, Daft Punk and Alt-J.
I wish I could remember the sound of your voice when you called me beautiful.
I wish I remembered what it felt like to be in your arms.
I wish I remembered your laugh.
However I do remember how proud, how elated, I was to be standing next to you.
You are sunlight and everything good in the world and everyone knew it.
I wish I knew if you missed me.
Keith W Fletcher Oct 2023
...Something so familiar
seemed to be hanging
just outside my periphery...
like an annoying honey bee
Suddenly I popped up
from a languid moment
of heat driven exhaustion....
knowing something
had to be done.
So I grabbed my official hat
out my office door I...hobbled along  
due...to... my left leg being asleep
"wake up you fool"
I muttered as I angled
past the front desk
where
that new deputy stood playing on some little box
"Is that an IPOD?"
No sir! what's an Ipod ?
never mind
just keep people off that bridge
till I return and tell you different! Is that clear?
Yes sir Danial...uhhh chief ...!
Good now get going.

I got to go talk to the D. A.
then out I went to the most oppressive sept heat seen in decades

"NO! No way! That's not possible!"
You think so...? the chief asked
well just look out there in the streets.
Where are the kids-
home studying for school when it's still 2 days away?
Raymond Frazer D.A. for Upton county + 2 more back in the hill country.
"I am...de...
doodlytermined
so you coming?
"Yeah chief...but just to prove you...
can't and won't
overstep your authority."
And who would determine that? Judge.... Willoughby?well let's go see what he has to say then.
If you can get him
to approve your overreach
I won't say another word!

Hello Judge my dispatcher call you?
"Yes. She did and ,I must say...lunch?sure ,but it sounds like a walk down memory land lane
We might as well! gonna get some good bbq and cold beer out on the hiway.
10 minutes.
We will pick you up
after you get done with Betty Lou

oh and write this on a sheet of of cardboard and post it. .*** the judge chuckled
be there to pick you up in a jif.

Who's Betty Lou? And where we going now?
Find that Deputy of mine give him a special assignment.

County ordinance or 2
So ....
Technically
we were trespassers
By all truth of right, wrong or law...but
No harm meant by the rules
we bent
MAYBE...
Telling too many seemed the major flaw


That overbearing, solar flaring, heat streak
summer of desperation turned inspiration
When seeing people instead of watching people
Gave me different ways of creating separation

From what I see and what I'm shown
What I'm told and what it is
I actually hear
What I say and what I truly believe
And how somethings really are...just as they appear

Amazingly enough this cyber shift implosion
Crashed thru the outer me
careening around within my fragile core
While crouching down in a clump of bushes
Staring into caramel brown eyes of a girl...who was
Just as naked as me

It blew through town back then  like a hot dry wind on a July day
When people were melting like long stick candles   bowing
like an emissary to a King
In any window where the aftenoon sun shines bright
As it is
magnified...like the stupid cruel rumor

A rumor that a farmer broke a water main while plowing

Literally what else would it take to break
That fragil overbearingly irriatatingly ******* monotony
that held the midwest
American small towns dying summer that
year
a near-death grip
Except.... maybe...if
the rumor had
turned out to be phony

The trail of misfit cars, pickups, motorcycles rolling North
must have looked like the jailbreak/ carnival parade it was...that
seemed to gather stragglers like a magnet gathers iron filings
Soon on saddle bank road 120+ kids
Naked and as innocent in the fact...
That one might think that today was the day
they were born and in some ways...
they were! Fully fledged
in exodus
from the womb
of pure monotonous ladened
claustrophobic morality... have way to languished hedonistic daydreams

Static groups of slow-melting apparitions
Unaware uninspired unintended refugees
Of homes...
of family...
and abject boredom
of that sad summer of high petrol- low crude performance and
Summer jobs never blooming and now... add a drought.

As the final Saturday wilted on the absentee mind
Before the Monday rises to drag them back in...
...to the ritualized killing of all who found
The looming tedium  of lessons and tests
unbearably cruel to have school begin its pull
Without ever even having a glimpse
Of the dying ghost
of a summer break that never was.

Until...that steady drone
rose from a distance
Those 90cc pistons
spitting hope as its frantic echo
Seemed
to somehow announce
from 3 miles away
"help he's killing me!"

Razer was making that hybrid bike scream
then...right down main he came shouting thunderously
But to no avail...
....as every word
unheard...
undecipherable

"...daughter shake
bigganake
common shop..." was the word that ppl heard....

...then it died
PISTON ROD took off over the barbershop
Headed for the moon

Razer stood over the smoking carcus
Spit on it ...kicked it... then saluted it ...
Before saying hey common nowz its flowing and growing
Quicker than quick ...
and that was how summer came to a glorious end.

with a ten acres puddle
Water spraying 30 ft high and by gawd we took to it like
butter to hot biscuits.
until that is
the cops arrived!

And we all run to hide.
.. so here's where
I started this tale

Shhh.. I said
to this *******
beside me
Flesh-colored and glistening ...
We better stay put
you know...
... till it calms down
Hey!  I don't believe I've ever seen you around...the town before...
do you live here... in Braeden  I mean?

We just moved here
she said.
Hi, I'm Joy-Ann Hope
And she surely was at that!
  forever  ...well
Until I changed her last name and she became Joy-Ann PAYNE.
HEY IM NOT TO BLAME
9 MONTHS  later we
met a little girl
named Summer Dawn Payne!

We know all that Daniel...but you cannot expect us...the DA and Chief judge ..not to mention members of the school board and...
Shut that up Judge Willoughby...
and be Mickey Willoughby and Ray Ray ...not D.A.Frazier for a second so you can remember.
Think back 38 yrs and how that line of dried out ,dusty, forlorn kids suddenly came alive that day ...the horns honking, bicycle tires spinning and Ol Joey P ...rest his soul on that horse of his as it clattered along the concrete and clopped by the lead car by galloping along the grass shoulder.
Beat us all to the puddle and I will never forget what we saw when we got close
Him and the mare neck deep ...ha haha ha Yes. Joey P and Nantucket Grey were good people. Rest in peace old friends.

Okay ...the heck with it say the judge mickey to the sad moment of revered silence ...I'm about ready to retire and as I recall that day now I realize 1 thing
Crystal effen clear now
I saw Mary Hortons ...uhh Who that day..and that I somehow got old.
I'm sold Chief ...Sorry, Daniel what do we do?
Well Ray Ray County DA what do you not have to say now?

Just Question guys...shall we go get a tractor or sledge hammers?

Oh come on guys this is the 21 century and I am chief of police with ... well army surplus courtesy
of the fed gov and everything we said we would fix when we got "growed up"
Maybe today we help the next gen or two know what freedom really feels like.
Ray .. call the sheriff " little Bobbie Jones " and tell him
- and them-
to stay the f away.
Judges order.  
Hope wins again.
wn
Dr Tayne Apr 2021
Oxymorique Weetabix
À la fois guerrier et naturel

Street barista, Fraîche Aube
Petit Poucet aux trous de beigne
Toujours chaud pour un Tim Hortons
Laura Nov 2022
i walk down Richmond quietly,
waking up to white crystal roof tops,
while St. Mary’s church bells
cry out for my resignation.
the fallen angel, walking on ice
with a birth control pack, Diet Coke,
and sometimes his painter sweats.
my Tim Hortons guy laughs with me
as i slip on black ice backwards.
for me, just breathing is falling victim,
to cold noses and cherry cheeks.
or to hope, long shots, and long hauls.
winter is here, i’m inside cozy,
and my mind gets too noisy,
to see things clearly.
I get anxious when I don't have a toothbrush in my purse.
I leave behind the house and the ability to take care of myself if I don't come back.
Every time I get in my car I wonder if it will take me somewhere else that night,
even if I know I'm coming home.
It's different now; I sleep in the same bed most nights and I brush my teeth at the same sink,
but I meet the same eyes that I used to see in different mirrors every day.
I stalled in more restrooms than I could count because every other door was shut.
I learned that Starbucks is better than Tim Hortons; there's a place to put your purse and the water tastes nicer,
and if people see you leaving with a seven-dollar latte they assume you're going to the same place you came from.
I buried my toothbrush at the bottom of my bag.
The baristas would ask about my plans for the day, and if I'd had the words, I might have said, "I'll get back in my car and see where it takes me."
It would have sounded poetic. It might have been enviable,
and I might have felt a little less homeless.
But how dare I say that thankless word--
I was always met with a laugh and a correction: "You'll never be homeless; look at all the places you can go."
And I was grateful, I was grateful, I was grateful,
but they never knew how lost it felt to sleep on different beds and couches and know it was because of how lost you felt.
I was welcomed in every different home except the one I was forced from,
and every different shower I cried in saved me a little bit more.
But everyone was always amused at how prepared I was when I pulled out my purse.
They didn't know it was because I didn't have any other place to keep my toothbrush.
i never meant to cause trouble. i was just hurting.

— The End —