Chez Victor
I was about ten years old when Chez Victor opened
A fine French chef in a greasy spoon on Davie Street
My dad took Thursday afternoons off
Every now and then I’d go along
When school got out
On his trip to the University record library
Where he’d select the next few albums to serenade Sunday
We’d glide into downtown in ragtop cool
MGBing overbridge into urban madness
Inside this grimed café a door opened into Paris
They would flower into Brel and Becaud
Sliding into a fraternity of francophone
We would feast on boeuf bourguignon
Drink Mouton Cadet
Of which I’d sip
Surreptitiously
But with the borrowed insouciance
Of the 14th arrondisement
Whose child I wasn’t
But might have been
Traveling across possibilities into fractured reality
Quietly soaking up Gallic truth
Like the French bread in the broth
At the bottom of the bowl
David Trudel © 2013
Balanced Days
These are hollow days These are days of magic
That reverberate like warning drums Sparkling brilliantly
Calling out for attention and action In the sunshine
These are days of false promises These are days of miracles
When leaders are led surreptitiously When everyone connects
Peeling away their morality Reaching across oceans
With each clandestine payment received To find friendship
These are days when processed food These are days of science
Is packaged in glamour When we have seen into
While delivering empty calories Life’s building blocks
That settle on our hips Bringing healing to the lost
These are days of denial These are days of knowing
Deliberate blindness to catastrophe Secrets unlocked
When truthsayers are muted Available at our fingertips
By the mighty and the masses Universal knowledge
These are days of erosion These are days of perfection
As justice becomes repression When public scrutiny
Socially engineering a new regime Surrounds scoundrels
Where the aristocracy of the wealthy And truth is crowdsourced
Is protected from crowds Using cameras and phones
By the proliferation of for-profit prisons By the oppressed
And when show trials have been replaced Who have discovered legs
By state sponsored executions On which to stand
These are days of empty entertainment These are days enlightened
Squandered opportunities As divinity descends
Wasted on garish spectacles To anyone who wishes
That serve as grand distractions For transcendence
These are days of oppression These are days of hope
When millions are herded into camps When we see beyond faces
Displaced by rootless fear and barbed greed Into eternal truths
When fear is celebrated as a virtue Discovering perfect beauty
And compassion is mocked In the wonder of it all
David Trudel © 2013
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