Urban living in Canada

Canadian Towns

In the history of urban space
We had little experience, as Canadians
But for argument’s sake

A country with this much land and water
Has a future in town-building
Towns may be an illusion
That people hang together somehow
Scholars paint lines in towns

Urban planners like to
Extend bike paths and
Beautify the things with roof gardens

Where you can grow your own organic vegetables
Towns should be Europeans, that is
Not devoid of culture and distinction
I don’t think Lao Tzu cared for towns
Sages could die in a modern metropolis

If you are sensitive, don’t try New York
Shouting sideways at one and another
I can only withstand polite citizens

That’s why Canada is perfect for me
Mock Bilingualism of Ottawa
Or student activists of Montreal
I find them amusing, though

Toronto is unable I hear to clean winter up
And Vancouver is lost to house-price inflation
I always wanted to move to a town
But I could never truly decide where.

Afraid of Big Cities

Being Eaten by the Big Apple

The big cities can kill you
Like how they can make you poor in a month
It’s unforgiving to move
To a bit city if you are poor

In debt, alone, or any of the above
New York, Toronto, Tokyo
What’s the difference, they swallow
The soul, perhaps we should avoid them

There are too many people
On any given corner to get
Through, to reach your destination
Unless you become one of them

Cold, hardened, not stopping for
Just any homeless man, walking over
Their old guitar, not crying in public
There are days I have no retrospect

I have purposefully forgotten
Some of the Godless situations I’ve lived
It’s for the better I think, I wouldn’t
Want to live with the humiliation

The wide-dilated embarrassment of pupils
And fear it took to communicate abandonment
The insomnia of old wounds rubbing sweat
All over my half-starved body

Everything was a ghost and I’d pray
In my own rituals for God to
Show me a life beyond this
I remember not feeling rationale or sincere

I remember imagining acquaintances
Were friends or people in coffee shops
Were people I could get to know
Adversity does strange things to you.

Missing Person #EmmaFillipoff

Have you ever been touched by someone who has inexplicably left your life? Do you know someone who went missing? Share your stories here, please retweet and repost this and share this on facebook.

Emma Fillipoff is a case in point. I was so touched by the documentary (Watch it below) and her mother’s dedication (https://www.facebook.com/shelley.fillipoff) to finding her daughter!

 

This poem is dedicated to Emma. Thousands of Canadians and Americans go missing every year. What can we do to help? Spread awareness. What are the signs that a person is vulnerable to running away or feeling isolated-alienated? Recognize these, and reach out. It could save a family, from a daughter running away. It could save a senior citizen, from taking their own life…

 

Missing Person

You have gone missing and
I miss you, trapped inside
The alienation you must have felt

I keep listening
for news of you dear
Though I know all souls
Are in the end the same energy

You have gone missing and
I miss you, your photographs
Burn in my imagin-admiration
For the woman you became

We are all geniuses inside
But in missing you
It’s becoming more clear
Who you are, who you are to me

I’m tired of theories about
What happened to you
Or the last place you were seen
You have gone missing,
But you live on inside of me.

Emma turns 29, on January 6th.

Please like the following facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/shelley.fillipoff

The documentary was aired by the 5th Estate:

http://www.cbc.ca/fifth/findingemma

For the environment

At the feet of altars
Beneath old trees
At the foot of where
Rivers join, I feel
The sentence of hard labor
Served in me, the words
From the lips of the great sea

The smell of salt in the water
And the feel of grass
Between my toes
All that I can create
Is nothing compared to the world
The world we used so indiscriminately
While we talk of imaginary profit

We harm the thing we love
By how we live, and that’s
The stupidity of being
An animal that cares for self
For nuclear family above
All else, we have been socialized
To be selfish, to hoard, to exploit

Though in the vivacity of time
I know nature will return
The balance, our debts
Grow like burnt forests
They grow like poisoned oceans
They grow like crowded cities
And I can’t help but wonder

Does the rooftop garden
Know which master it serves?
Do the storms know
They are a weapon of karma
Upon an arrogance of man?