Agincourt - lost notes from the Toronto Guy

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Agincourt poem
(July 05, on Peaches)

Agincourt in summer burns you to the skin, it is a thin layer of nothing that coats suburbia and underneath lie secrets buried. In Scarborough north of the 401 a winding patch of streets, over 60km of sameness, a botched escape from middle class bleak. Parks and churches dot the scape with lush green lawns, flowers chopped and manicured and immigrants sing their dream song.

At Midland and Sheppard is the old Knox church from the 1840s or earlier, a stone face for a place to be proud. Agincourt, named for a battle at the whim of an MP, for the sake the first post office in that area, well there are funnier things in history.

The nations congregate and eat dim sum and halal and pakorah, but an old guard enclave exists still and directs a secret aura. The name smacks of respectability even though it’s a bloody battle, now it’s not Henry the V or Shakespeare but the rat-race L-train rattle.

From McNicholl to the 401, from Kennedy to McCowan, I wandered streets on Peaches blue for 7 or 8 long hours. I didn’t meet a soul who smiled except for one here and there, an occasional oasis of humanity in the stinking July air.

So much religion
Chinese churches, Hindu temples, anglo bungalows
Everyone knows but will never admit it
Sometimes you have to visit
just to confirm your stereotypes

Kennedy roars in the afternoon,
And Brimley roars in the morning

Sweat stains on my tshirt

Fear of a heart attack on the road
The sunset over the 401 and the two towers above the Scarborough Town Centre like hope for Siberia, the STC has got a great food court
And I had chicken ceaser salad

Remembering to arch my back
Brimley woods recall the Blair Witch

I revert to the bicycle sidewalks of my youth.

I broke my back on the concrete
and July was thick and soupy.