Just Because We Live Here
Poetry by Henry Doyle
I get on the bus after a ten-hour shift,
pay my $3 to just go a few blocks,
too tired to walk home.
I sit down in the first seat I see,
open the window and put on my mask.
A maskless man who wears a smile of hate
jumps up to close the window, then says loudly,
“Keep the window closed, you fuck’n junkie crackhead.”
Just because we live here,
they think we’re all the same.
But there’s another side.
There’s George who runs the barber shop beside the Empress Hotel
who always has a joke for us and sometimes cuts my hair for free.
Carlos, the community wise man selling hemp clothing at Serf to Surf,
who puts out a container of fresh water for the dogs.
My drinking buddies, regulars at the Empress, most of them retired:
Jimmy the Ferret, a longshoreman for twenty years;
Jimmy Mack, a stockbroker who got rich, then got poor three times in a row;
Brian, a part-time upholsterer;
Ralph, who worked for the railroad for thirty-three years;
David, a former building contractor who cleaned tour buses until last year;
Byron who lives upstairs at the Empress and worked in the sawmills;
Little Roy who worked in the sawmills too;
Hungarian Steve, a professional drywaller;
Benny who removed asbestos insulation at Woodwards.
The bartenders and waitresses at all the pubs —
The Empress, Pat’s Pub, The Savoy, The West Hotel, Grand Union.
Ian who sells t-shirts he’s designed.
Alan, the artist who sketched me in the bars and alleys.
Cartoon Mike who drew the best handmade birthday cards.
All the workers at the shelters
Everyone at the Carnegie Centre,
like the red-headed lady security guard who’s a kickboxer,
the DTES Writers Collective that meets every Thursday
run by Gilles, a retired carpenter who’s twenty years sober,
Diane who sets out a big buffet of snacks,
putting tea lights on each table for monthly poetry readings.
All the street people who come to listen.
The guy and his girlfriend who come up to me, saying
“Thank you for writing about us.”
Construction workers from the labour pools —
some young, some old, all tough.
Most of them too smart to be living here.
The Asian clerk at Garlane Pharmacy who sells me lottery tickets.
I tell her, “If I win, I’ll buy you roses.”
Young families bringing their kids to school.
A First Nations father who walks there with his three sons.
their long black hair in braids.
I smile at them, thinking
they are beautiful.
From No Shelter by Henry Doyle (Anvil Press, 2021)