Parkdale is a Carnival Every Day

Parkdale is a carnival every day:
Sidewalks ajostle with innocent apostles wholly out of their caves,
Gnostic prophets with no ‘earers in the kingdom of this world,
Tragically bangled unknown starlets seeking ways and means,
Always on the verge of sinking into some profound and sinister reality-induced trance.


Parkdale is a carnival every day:
Edwardian buildings implying back stairways,
Bicycle repair shops run by immortal Algonkian medicine men
A sound mind in a sound body on a sound cycle--shopfront Zen.


Parkdale is a carnival every day:
Everywhere roustabout gents with pants slung low
And squeezable honkable scarlet noses,
Women with beehive hair, mascara, sans teeth,
And less lip than lipstick,
And all so colourfully flushed or Pierrot-pale.


Parkdale is a carnival every day:
The tumbling pigeons at the library fountain
Part for every circus placard in Mosaic waves:
Epileptics are Subject to Covert CIA Experimentation;
Prostitution is Destroying Our Proud Neighbourhood;
Drugs are Destroying Our Proud Neighbourhood;
Pigeons are Destroying Our Proud Neighbourhood;
Pride is Destroying Our Neighbourhood;
Our Neighbourhood is a Covert CIA Operation;
Curse God, See Parkdale, and Die.


Parkdale is a carnival every day:
At twilight, drowned men rise from the lake at Sunnyside,
Victims of defective chemical, biological, intellectual or ancestral roller coasters.
And men are still drowning,
At twilight, at midnight, and, more horribly, at dawn.


Parkdale is a carnival every day.
Today, a bright sun painted on the canvas sky,
I walk the streets, scorning a net, yet knowing,
At any time,
I may come chest to face with the human cannonball,
Or face to lip with the lady who breathes fire.


Or, watching the passing show,
Become part of the passing show--
Mr. Ingenuous Jones, the idiot scribbling rube who thinks he knows.

-- Stephen K. Roney