Bye, Toronto (and thanks for the socks-- I still wear them sometimes)

Toronto
why do you
look to me now
like a city designed
under a bad Communist government?

Where are your memories,
Toronto--
where are your ghosts?

Did you forget it all
at the corner of King and Bay,
the centre of your Moloch heart?


There is no throb of life
in your skyscrapers and
wires, Toronto,
there never was,
there are
only those who
breathe within you
briefly. (They pushed me
out the door and
onto an early train today,
Toronto, all red-eyed
with morning.)

There is no imagination
in your long souless suburbs your
endless BMW lots,

nor in your scrub hills of Don Valley,
your forgotten moxie,
your hollow dark-eyed beauty
that you pulled me in with
so long ago,
your vaginal wall-art, Toronto,
is all just a front--

I see that now.

I left something of me
inside you, Toronto and
I may never
get it back (and, no,
I'm not just talking about my ipod),

but you forgot yourself, too,
chased nothing for so long that you
finally overtook it.

But still, even now,
when I walk through your
great grey streets
dragging memory behind me
like a suitcase full of concrete,
I talk to you, explain the
nuances of things as if
you're listening still, as if
you ever were.

Anyway, I'm sorry, Toronto,
but I've fallen in
love with someone else,
she's dangerous and aloof
and speaks a dozen languages
(most of which are strange to me),
she's already been making plans to leave,
and yet she
lets me feel at home
in the meantime.


You're so empty to me now, Toronto,
a glittering hollow shell,
and maybe someday I'll remember
that first golden rush of
when (and why) I loved you,

but for now
I can only wonder
if most of your soul,

lies somewhere else,
in those
who dreamed beside you,
briefly.