Don’t send me to live
in the suburbs of your life
but maybe a place away
from that downtown core. Set me up
in one of those unassuming neighbourhoods
where people in little ground-floor stores
make a living selling necessities,
people who don’t mind
that no one else has ever heard of them.
Where you can be sure whether that’s really
what’s-her-face sitting in the next booth
texting someone.
Don’t let me come to need
the pleasure of distance
that seems nice because so simple
taken in systems that just work,
but do no work.
If I stay in your suburbs too long
I may no longer want to know your heart
get my shoes wet when your streets flood
or hang out in ill-defined back alleys.
So let my car be totalled
or impounded
and my ttc tickets lost or stolen
I’ll have to get on my bike and coast
down toward the lake
where those same ideas
about roads and traffic regulation
first draped themselves everywhere
in naive rumples.
Draw me jostling along the changing terrain
through concrete attempts
becoming their own museums
and let’s start the urban unplanning.