do you remember when we sat at the tim horton’s
across 21 from from the high school
well the high school is now a middle school
and canada’s java makes me shit my pants
every time i come back i think about the time we had a lunch time beer at the brant hotel a few weeks after turning 18
i was alarmed to find an old man rolling a joint in the bathroom
now that kind of shit delights me and the only thing i drink at lunch time is soda water and cranberry juice
they say it’s good for urinary tract infections
anyways
im coming back for a show at the shell
the same stage i graduated on
the only friend i see from back then is my twin sister
she just had a baby and her whole world has changed
the only thing i ever wanted then was to be able to write a song and sing it like my neighbour joe was doing
i didn’t pursue anything else expect for words and melodies and how to play the guitar
sometimes i wish i had spent the thousand dollar scholarship i received from the alberta midget hockey league on a fourth of a semester’s tuition but it was to be spent before the age of twenty five
and i am twenty seven now
win some lose some
anyways
i digress
i will be at the shell theatre tomorrow night
you can call it a homecoming
but that won’t be quite accurate
because somehow it feels like i’ve not left
half my brain is in a song
and the other half is in the bathroom of the brant hotel
and it’s just as dirty as it was on that lunch time squalor
maybe i’ll see you there