Circa Today

You drive along the highway, closer to something

Leaving something else behind,

The first thing you see is condos

Makes you wonder if there’s anyone left

In this city, or if they’re building just because,

If you ever get the chance to leave

They’ll be the last thing you see

Before you’re gone (the condos)

But most of us don’t, or won’t.

Every day a coffee shop springs up around the people

Traps them in like caffeinated ghosts,

We already had a zoo but now I guess

We’ve got two, one for the kids

One for the tourists, foreign and domestic,

They arrive on planes, leave on planes,

But in between they’re part of it

And I bet there are six or seven

New condos to confuse their photographs.

You feel lighter than you did when you arrived

Are your pockets half-empty

Or will you cling to your suburban optimism?

In spite of endless, relentless skinny white girls

There are vague notions of gas money

Bus tickets or dingy western trains

Still buried in your wallet with a

SIN card and a bunch of hard plastic

Photos used to spell your name.

Grande decaf lactose-free no fun latte please

With a vanilla biscotti to go

Just to spice it up for once, those days

You remember that you came here

For adventure, wasted all your time

Waiting in line at the entrance

Now you’re wishing these sidewalks

Could take you home, too bad

They’ve built another condo in the way.

There is a necklace on a hook upon the wall. . .

There is a necklace on a hook upon the wall,

I think it had meaning once, not long ago,

Now solid and still, the ruin of months,

That tortuous noose in pages past

Become a nothing,

Like Jesus Christ strung up among the sinners,

The idle set between a damp and dirty towel,

Just lately used to wipe a face,

And a little red umbrella,

Lately housed a stranger’s face just a half a world away.

There is a necklace on a hook upon the wall,

And a charm upon the chain,

I think it played a tune once,

Or slightly skewed it kept the pace of every step

Once forced into the future, carelessly unknown,

Or choosing not to know,

Seen and unseen but never fully blind

And all the worse in time because of it,

Real or illusioned, a thickening coat of filth

Repulses every kind of human contact

From the gentlest, most graceful tips of fingers

To the wreckage of the clasp,

Impressed as you are by rust.

And on the hook upon the wall,

Whole and surely broken

Hangs a necklace,

And I think I knew it once.