lament on the decay of Canada

fitting, perhaps, that the air smells like microwaved mud

curlicues of brown paint peel from every signpost

rigged with wiring and traffic lights, reminiscent

of homemade bombs, and a scaffolding rig topples over

with the weight of a family of pigeons, when

sitting fearfully out front of its elm-flanked

old city hall, I think what has happened

to Toronto – to Canada, my mother’s birth country?

long layovers make me see things wrong.

a fact, but I think that at any rate I see

not what’s bad a priori but in decline –

*

why do the number of flags lining the streets

measure up so faithfully to the number sleeping on them

the masses of real flags – those without maple leafs

with red and white stripes not from dye but bad sunburn –

sleeping in gardens, the hospices of the city –

asleep on vents until the muggy morning heat floats across

from the far side of one Great Lake or other?

why do so many men want for shirts and equilibrium

in these infant hours? so many tributaries

call to me from younger, kinder memories.

*

Canada, your people don’t know which way’s up

but look down enough to see just where that is –

your daughters’ daughters live in Kitchener

in houses with rooves for snow, garret rooves like bells

and weep – stare, from Winnipeg, into the endless prairies –

your daughters’ husbands paralysed or dead, or destitute

your daughters’ sons as afraid of people as people are of them

your daughters’ sons baying for the blood of Steven Harper.

*

Condominiums are eating Toronto alive.

the oversized moustaches drawn on propagandist billboards

above the photoshopped lips of gorgeous blondes
relaxing in the trappings of a better life than yours

a space age life thought up by Ice Constructions

or one of the others, are justified – ashen gulls fly low

over junkies coughing up phlegm and hot dog roll crumbs

as they totter by on lifted bikes towards the east, where the sun

is newly risen, low over coffee houses, bathrooms nightly filled

with the urban hell borne like a worm in the bowels

of urban paradise – famous chocolate-gelatine glaze

staining suit collars like war paint the cannons on tanks –

sidewalks never empty and always silent.

*

I know that my underwear is probably stained with cum

that I’ve gone to bed

with three girls in as many days

that age, no matter the grace, bottoms out at decay

I know that cities, countries are nothing if not bodies

born to grow strong and then grow weak and then go

but time suggests that Toronto’s not terminal yet

nor Canada, only that its people have lost something

that, as Wittgenstein thought, makes itself manifest

only that a lot of its people have gone sort of wild –

*

the auto virus has struck Ontario down

so hard that no more need be said

so hard that I cry just to think of what’s to come

for all those folks with houses worth thirty-five grand

and the waterfront casinos making record profits –

Alberta’s vast tar sands aren’t filled with oil

but the worthless ink of Krakens playing defence

and the biosphere’s black bile –

while Calgary is underwater, climate scientists drown

under heavy state-imposed surveillance –

lies are sanctioned, truths must be signed off –

the Espanola paper mills run all day and night

the steam from the press so unearthly as it plumes

out into the gorge above the river, so ceaseless

and pale, too far from the highway to smell

like a conclave of ghosts confused about what they're haunting  –

what of the plights of Quebec, run by the mafia

and the West Coast, what of the Northwest Territories

the Inuit, the First Nation graveyards resembling Hollywood sets

the island on Lake of the Woods owned by Bruce Willis

what of the Moose and the Elk, the Bears, the Bald Eagles?

*

I’m shot. I see a lot of Toronto in me –

I’m half Canadian, I’m three days between showers

I’m loveless and irascible on long layovers –

loveless as the trade unions turned upon by people

turned upon by pennilessness, who clean the parks

and sidewalks while the protests keep on burning –

loveless as the churches, mosques and synagogues

duking it out, with mostly blasphemous arsenals

for the right to be the saviours of the wretched –

loveless as every scapegoat bleating in a foreign tongue –

the roads are wrecked and good food’s hard to find

good coffee impossible

the roads are faded white like old pyjamas

like the facades of Sears and Walmart and Canada Tire

and Target and Petsmart and Thisbarn and Thatbarn

and Dollarama and Safeway and Jimbo’s Emporium –

all faded, all crowded, all cheap –

“don’t get hurt a second time”

say the personal injury lawyer benches –

“keeping Canadians afloat”

say those for credit loan stores

“always fresh”

alleges the great Tim Horton’s juggernaut –

Walmart now sells groceries too, and so the markets close –

alarmed are the frosted windows on every home.

*

Canada, your people cry foul

your wheelchair companies are building multiplexes

your Gotham City architecture

and modular cottages

makes every heart the heart of a cave diver

who’s contorted into a nook of the deepest sea

and can’t get out –

do something, my god, do something –

where is the spirit that built Ottawah

and plotted the Rocky Mountains?

where is the spirit that wrote on Windsor’s sign

“let the river and the earth sustain us”?

where the fuck are your city planners, Toronto?

*

I guess I’ll be moving soon –

the next place I see will be in its centennial year

fireworks in all its convenience stores cleaned out

a plaque laid, or fountain built, in its central park

curtains drawn on every house to let the occasion in

some sweet old movies showing at the mall

the strongest of Canadian accents broken into songs

of homage to a sanctified past, hope for a future

that begins, for me at least in September

and maples, everyone knows, look better come Fall.