Multideceptionalism

Back to my hour-a-day exercise regime
I take the country road today
Passing boring suburbia on my way there

Every time I walk around my model home neighbourhood
Or any other neighbourhood in Canada
I smile, seeing all the different types of people

Different cultures, different beliefs
Brown, white, Jewish, Sikh
Aboriginals with new-found land
A gay couple holding hands

Or even kissing on the grass
At the Toronto Harbourfront
I love to be proud, nationalist
O Canada
We are the country the immigrants chose
People of every colour, creed, culture
Feel safe here, accepted
Tolerated

As I paddled the canoe around my tiny hometown lake with dad
He said "I wonder how many people at the beach today are thinking to themselves, 'God, I'm glad I don't have to worry about the land mines anymore.'"

Maybe other countries like the States are ignorant, but at least we are intelligent and compassionate
But are we?
Is it all a lie, this multiculturalism?
Multideceptionalism

Bone-chilling stares
Forgotten tips on meals, taxi fares
Doctor becomes garbage man
Natives uprooted from their land

Bullies in schools, attacks from rapists
Every muslim labeled a terrorist
Mexicans forced to work double-shifts
In third-world-style factories, forced thrift

Or more simple hurts like
Going to the movies and seeing close-ups of the same whitewashed faces
Minorities in the margins, never the spotlight
The albino is always the villain

Black-eyed battered women ignored by the police
It's just a cultural issue, not provincial
Slurs, words that hurt more than they should
Whispers of the Holocaust become full-throated shouts
The black version of Holocaust could be happening right now
But none of us would know it

What lies beneath the surface?
Behind the eyes of every person who is not
Christian, white, conservative, male, first-class, successful, born here
I can read fifty books by marginalized Canadians
I can stop every person on the street and ask them how it feels to live here
But I'll never really know

My life is so sheltered
I've never been anywhere other than Canada, the U.S., England, Holland
What lies beyond?
How can my story be half as interesting as theirs?
I've never experienced what they have
And I can't make assumptions

But here is one thing I have felt
Alone
More awake at night than during the day
A vampire amongst sparrows
Incapable of getting a decent job
Or even a shoddy one these days

Brothers on a different wavelength
Chester with his own friends, drifting away from us
And Leo working on his novel, anxious to leave home
Daddy resigned, lost, dead inside
My addiction to sleep and sloth is not welcome here in my own home
But where would I be welcome?

I could move out and live with my university peers
But I'm too shy to move past acquaintance
I've never had a really good friend

Maybe I'm not black, or gay, or disabled, or transgendered
But whenever I go for a walk I feel
Disconnected
Alone
Smiling face as I walk by
But it is a mask
A lie
Multideceptionalism