Where Have You Been? Poem by Matt Render

Where have you been?


Walking down that old road again?
Standing by the ledge
Watching cars trickle by at midnight
Savouring the last drops
of a rainstorm in July
Are you still holding up drug stores?
I'd bet those new red shoes
are looking quite worn
Walking through corn mazes, and galleries
Getting lost among all the pretty faces
All along Hepburn Street.
Carrying bags of broccoli and ground-up meat
and sour lemon candy
Drinking the stale coffee from every rusted pot
from each and every truck stop diner
Sipping back the bitterness quickly while it's still hot
Does it still taste the way it did?
How could it not

Collecting essential oils and clipping old magazines
Drinking gin and spitting out sunflower seeds
Where have you been
Shacked up In a basement
With the window cracked open
To let the autumn air in
Breathing faintly the air of dead leaves
And falling asleep
With a good book on your face
While TV reruns were playing

I know I saw you
Alone in a bar
On the other side of the city
Where the subway ends
And then standing on a sidewalk
Listening to a street musician
Smoking a menthol and talking nonsense
with old drunken patrons and mental patients
Staring empty long after it closed
Was it you
When the sun was just beginning to set
Dodging litter along the beach
As the polluted waves
Were getting rough
The storm was coming in
And I think I saw you take a puff
Of black hash from Afghanistan
With one hand inside your sweater pocket
And that stray mutt just kept on barking.
While pigeons screamed into the sand
And in autumn I'm sure you were there
Strolling through a cemetery
Looking at each inscription
With your thousand-yard stare
Chewing a big green apple
Where have you been
Walking down that old road again?
The same one where we met
Has it changed since we left?