FUTURE PRESENT

#22 McBUS (boarding at Main)

Curious tourists
two animated young teen boys
eager Asian eyes pressed to the windows
see city sights
Old balconies and signs in Chinatown
the gap with viaducts and domed megasculptures
timewarp to brick Victory Square vistas
along towny Pender to financial district skyscrapers

The boys nudge each and point excitedly
at the population of tall buildings
each a statement of an ego, style and era
Now heritaged elders from the thirties are reflected in
pioneering Corbusian slab towers from the fifties/sixties
some now decently reclad with sombre glass and post mod motifs
Sensible looking seventies structures
are stili fighting the energy crisis with vast glass expanses
The laboured exuberance of post modern decor
reinventing pasts with fetish details
The boys exclaim
exchange teasing taps and stare

Ah the city planned!
corporate sentinels and hotels along Burrard
bureaucratic whims cast in regulations and concrete
Urban parklets with pools and sculpture
indulgences paid for bonus density
The rendered perspectives populated them with normal families
but only brown baggers and the unwanted poor have the time
Towards Yaletown where roundhouse and mills once made work for men
low sunlight guilds the sprouting condo towers
silhouetting them against steel wool clouds cued for contrast
Sunset colours tinge picture postcard views from the bridge
plausibly out to the open Pacific this hazy summer day

The two boys exchange words and glances
slender fingers inflecting their conversation
What do they see in seeing scenes
I dreamt even prayed for as a boy?
What thoughts and futurisms do they think and fantasize?
starting from the architopia I once hoped to realize
When my eyes had the wonder
of those nudging pointing grinning boys

I knew what was better for others
before I knew what was good for me
The next stop is mine (alighting at Cypress)

RECENT ACCUMULATIONS AND APPROPRIATED VOICES, Kalayaan Publications, 1997