Downtown Eastside (Vancouver)

Oily pavement shimmers

Painted by neon and headlights

That warm to a false glimmer

Embers of dreams that live only at night.

Toothy brick scours leather-wrapped shoulders

Above too-small skirts and too-tight jeans;

The darkness uncovers

What we least want seen.

The passing cars and seductive signs

Blur into a cosmic river

Drowning those naively straining to divine

Howa bright-eyed child becomes a  swine-flock’s fodder.

Pills and experience have inoculated

Against wind and rain,

For appetites must be sated

As the City fats on inner pain

Which dulls the voices saying not to ride

In the foetid truck whose driver, grinning,

Accepts another Offering

Washed in by the tide.