Welcome to Resist the Zeitgeist! Andrew Scott is a writer, musician, and poet based in Toronto, Canada. Resist the Zeitgeist will be a regular feature on Eklectish highlighting Andrew’s latest poetic works and anthology.

My partner likes to nap…

My partner likes to nap.

Middle of the day, heat on, window cracked.

The Lower East side soundtrack of non-English voices outside the window of our ground floor hotel lull her to sleep.

New York’s version of white noise, a thunderstorm or a Brahms lullaby.

While she sleeps, I walk the streets looking for sites and locales for our next meal.

I wonder, not for the first time, what it would be like to live here, in this land of street walks, next meals, Spanish lullabies and daytime naps.

We leave tomorrow.

He’s No Alexander…

When you knocked on the window of my car and told me to “relax” because you felt I was driving aggressively, even though you did not see the lead up in which I had to swerve away from a rapidly moving SUV not adhering to the rules of a four-point stop, what did you think the outcome would be?

Sanctimonious in your tone, you see yourself, after all, on “the right side of history” as you lecture me that there are kids in this neighbourhood.

As if I didn’t know that, as I was driving to pick up my son at the time.

I dig your righteous indignation.

Your carefully curated outrage that matches perfectly with your hipster grey beard and wool toque, although I’m sure you have never worked as a stevedore in your life.

Your soft middle-age midsection filled with craft IPA, farmer’s market scones, privilege and whatever food that the mommy blog your wife follows was promoting that week.

Delivered by UBER Eats and ingested while supine and watching “Squid Game.”

In my mind, I was Mike Tyson.

Not the ear biting Mike Tyson, nor the Mike Tyson who fell to Buster Douglas in Japan, but the Mike Tyson who stared down Peter McNeeley with terrifying velociraptor intensity in what has to be the scariest pre-fight in boxing history.

In my mind I humiliated you.

I was impregnable and I ate your children.

My style was impetuous.

In my mind I made it totally clear to you that I am not someone who drives aggressively, is not unaware of children in my immediate surroundings, nor am I someone who gets their window tapped by soft morally superior types on route from their graphic design job to pick up their children from the local public school.

In my mind, I’m Alexander.

He’s no Alexander.

In my mind, I’m the best ever.

However, I did none of this.

I simply drove away.

Andrew Scott lives, writes and makes music in Toronto, Canada.