Toronto

After a weekend in Toronto...here is some pictures: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=125796&l=3583e&id=897790111

Big Smoke lies on the shores of GreatLake

Cosmopolitan metropolis of one thousand secrets

Lies only a bus ride away

Through mass asphalt ribbons, we lurch

Towards destination not seen in two years

Construction delays to detours

Across vast urban wilderness

Of highway, warehouses, vans and cars

No-man’s land of souls lost to wages

But gradually keep ongoing journey

To where the Tower looms above the Dome

I arrive in diesel-fumed centre

Surrounded by concrete and people

And venture off…

 

Subways steadily maintain schedule

Whispering doors and lurching forward

Clicking tracks and squealing corners

Through darkness beneath we rode unawares

To million masses that move above us

Exit through stairways to street surface

Old neighbourhoods that are eternal

Tall buildings that stand and remain

As before and will continue

And never come to end

Streetcars clacking along roadways

Thousand voices in different tongues

And everywhere it never ends

With streets with names instead of numbers

Fashionably dressed Asians saunter

Down secret Chinese streets

Cat stands on chair on pole

At entrance to side-street market

One hundred stand at street corner

Where the longest street does run

And wait for signal beacon

To continue to a million errands

All moving and walking and going

Cars and steel and glass like mountains

Yet we still find secret places to hide, and smoke

Away from the mass of millions

And watch the buildings grow from the trees

Thunderstorms ride in from lake

Batter down the buildings and make the streets anew

While we go hide in nightclubs

Fashionably dressed and moving

To same repeated refrains

Lose ourselves in music

Lose ourselves on street corners

Become one with the reality of our surroundings

Slip into the night-time

To where Edwin is the honest

And sleep, but not at home

 

Reviews

[Kees Kapteyn]

When I was a teenager, I used to hop the bus with nothing but a backpack and a wallet and ride up to Downtown just to spend the day looking at the record shops, art galleries and strip clubs. You've totally captured the Toronto experience and I love the allusions you make to the Tower and The Dome and 'the longest street'- which would be mysterious to someone unfamiliar to the city but totally connected to someone who knows and loves it. The pace of this poem captures the pace of the city as you rush to describe everything you see in the space of time it takes to see it. Very descriptive and accurate- well written!

[darkgurl]

Is Toronto really like this? I thank you for the write, I can kinda picture it....Kim