Saturday, July 6, 2013

casino poem



I'm sorry
but I want
a fucking
casino

I was that child at Ontario Place in 1971
that post adolescent in 1976 dizzied by the CN Tower
closeted on steel bridges dwarfing waves
marveling at cinesphere
flying over Lake Superior
by the steeply raked theatre seat of my pants
mesmerized by geo-desic domes
floating familial fun filled flotillas
hell bent on leading me nowhere
and now god dammit
I am done with all that
in my restless maturity

and I'm sorry
but I want
a fucking
casino!

one I can walk into, gamble a little
risk my life on sordid cocktails
morbid gleeful conversations with illicit strangers
lurid fashion choices threatening my tenuous grasp on proper casino attire

I was that child
And now I want to be that overgrown infant
Rummaging thorugh my filthy purse
Weeping into empty laps once filled with chips
Arm wrestling with one-arm bandits
Telling strippers that I love them deeply

Why do we always push the playgrounds for addiction into the margins
Relegate them to our deepest reservations about our ability
to manage our little first world pathologies - reservations we have already exploited and mismanaged with reconciliations that can never undo our risky colonization of the hearts and minds of many

Canada! Ontarry-arry-airy-ons!!! My God - I want a casino!

If we really want to help ourselves and pre-selected addicts
Then lets keep them close to home and off the highways leading to far off Orillian, Niagaran, Kawarthan slots and blackjack bistros loitering in the regions smirking at our uptight urban fear of more of what already lines the gut wrenching streets of our gorgeously garish tarnished cities

Oh God! Canadians! On-tarry-arry-aryans!

I’m sorry
But I want
A fucking casino!

A casino with provincially funded childcare
and free on site seminars for managing addiction

because they can be managed!!!

And when our governmentally challenged healthcare gambles our lives away and becomes the house of rising suns advertising on billboards that our civic duty lies in the carpeted corridors of casino castles equating family with a weekend of water slides wet bars wolf lodges bearing bare chesty daddys in the hotel lobby on their way to wave pools lined with plastic beaches like  some simulacric Waikiki with slots in the morning and slots at night

Then who are we kidding!

I am that child, and I fear for children and where they play as we push so-called sin into rural margins

Beware - it could flourish there - the management of all our urban fears - it could flourish there, swept under carpets in dusty faded margins
On farmland, in fields, it could flourish there, where children play…

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