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* Matt Peake

I have no money  
</br> so I spend time  
</br> a pocket full of minutes  
</br> scattered across late August evenings  
</br> is my currency  
</br>  

![Figure1](http://www.cmaj.ca/https://www.cmaj.ca/content/cmaj/174/9/1308/F1.medium.gif)

[Figure1](http://www.cmaj.ca/content/174/9/1308/F1)

Figure. Photo by: Photos.com

I've spent time walking alone alongside the Canal  
</br> marveling at the boats like a tourist  
</br> wondering  
</br> whatever happened to you?  
</br>  

I've spent time screaming, cursing, pleading, threatening the moon  
</br> because I thought it was God's eye and wanted his attention  
</br> it never blinked but I still didn't get a response  
</br> Earth's orbit is always just outside of Heaven's peripheral vision  
</br>  

I've spent time restrained to the bed at the General Hospital psychiatric ward  
</br> watching the sun rise out my fourth floor window but unable to chase it  
</br> brown leather straps keeping me from going West  
</br> let me go  
</br> let me go  
</br> the hallways in here all sting of chlorine  
</br> and I don't anybody in this place is capable of feeling  
</br>  

Love  
</br>  

is a mingling of souls into an arrangement of protection  
</br> a gift and a demand  
</br> love is a removal of walls  
</br> an invitation and a warning Vthe best thing that could possibly ever happen to you  
</br> love is an exchange of worlds that creates a universe for you to play in  
</br>  

I've spent time in the shadow of the Peace Tower working for the government  
</br> earning $17 an hour as a records management quality control officer  
</br> re-arranging inactive files so that they'll be in perfect chronological order  
</br> when they're shipped off to be destroyed  
</br> God bless the Liberals  
</br>  

I've spent time down in the Glebe  
</br> wandering tree-decorated streets with nice old houses that all look strangely empty  
</br> boycotting Starbucks' coffee shops  
</br> until they come clean, break down, drop the pretense, and finally just admit  
</br> it's not tall, grande, and venti  
</br> it's just plain old small, medium, and large  
</br>  

I've spent time hopelessly lost in Ikea  
</br> aimlessly searching for the Svenning work desk and swivel chair  
</br> desperately asking clerks who actually got off their shifts two hours ago  
</br> but couldn't find the exit to go home  
</br>  

I've spent time at lonely Ottawa outskirt cemetaries  
</br> staring at tombstones trying to make the names and dates autobiographical  
</br> wondering why you  
</br> why you when it was always me that dreamed of a burial  
</br>  

I've crashed  
</br> and a fallen soul is a fallen soul  
</br> it doesn't matter what straw finally broke your back  
</br> tipped the scale to the weight of your burdens  
</br> knocked you down, kept you from getting up  
</br> it doesn't matter  
</br> what matters are the people who help you up  
</br> who reach down  
</br> who stop their world for just a minute  
</br> let it intersect with yours  
</br> and create a universe for you to play in  
</br> where there is no gravity to hold you down  
</br> there is no gravity  
</br> to stop you from drawing the sight of the moon and talking with God  
</br> there is no gravity  
</br> to keep you from breaking the restraints and chasing the sun  
</br>  

what's important  
</br> are the family and friends who love you  
</br>  

I have no money  
</br> so I spend time with them  
</br> and if I did have money  
</br> nothing would change except the numbers in my bankbook  
</br>  

## Footnotes

*   Matt Peake is the Winner of the 2002 CBC Radio Ottawa Region Poetry Face-Off.