Parkdale Where the World Converges

            My thumb hurt just as much on Monday as it did the day I pricked it, but it didn’t bleed when I was playing guitar, so I assume that’s a sign that it’s healing.

I went to do laundry at around midday and the very reserved middle-aged East Asian woman was running the Laundromat as usual, but the older guy who I assume is her husband showed up later.

When I arrived there was a kid’s wagon holding a customers large bag sitting in front of two of the three biggest washing machines. I immediately had the sense that it belonged to the thirty something guy in the baseball cap, with several earrings, two sleeves of tattoos, the big wallet chain and who was putting his laundry in the dryer with extremely ungraceful and loud movements. As I was untying my bags near the large washers he did notice me and asked if I wanted him to move his wagon but I told him I’d use the one that wasn’t blocked. There were several places there that he could have parked his wagon without inconveniencing anyone but I figured that it was up to the woman in charge to tell him that. She didn’t seem to mind though or else was too afraid of his tattoos to say anything. Maybe she thought he was yakuza. When I came back to put my wash in the dryer he was sitting at a table and meticulously folding his laundry. Then a woman showed up with his Jack Russell and so he stopped everything to focus on getting the dog to “chill”.

            Eighty-two Tibetans with candles came chanting down Queen Street that night. I assume it was one of their “free Tibet” demonstrations. It’s nice that it wasn’t too cold for them and their kids seemed to be having a good time.

            I finished at least a workable draft of my poem “Parkdale Where the World Converges” after more than day of struggling with it

Parkdale where the world converges

and every ethnic group on the planet lives it seems

that brown men from everywhere are in business but also

Tibetans have their temple and restaurants

and West and East Indians

give us delicious roti shops ethnic food stores and

two Indo-Canadian supermarkets
graced each day by bright ladies from all of the lands

who mingle there with artists mad people and hipster colonists

who themselves rally at liquor beer and food bank line-ups

with psychotic and narcotic drugs in their pockets

and I watch the show as the channel changes from day to night

full of  drunks I’ve seen for years and spastic crackheads

with swinging arms and puppet moves though the women don’t hook

in front of my place anymore but still there are sirens cops and homeless

on weekends when suburban drunks come to lock themselves in gentrified bars

Parkdale is dying

dying in my arms

but at the funeral viewing it still has charm

on Queen Street where I live above a donut shop

in an old building with cheap rent and big windows

Parkdale converges with me

as I watch it go.