To the streets,
And after careful
Sidelong glances,
Assuring that they’re free,
They dance in shadowed
Brilliance
Feeling freedom
In their tails and feet;
They sing their songs,
They write their verse,
They rant of politics,
They criticize their government,
Write parodies to it;
They run, quite naked,
Prance with glee,
Forgetting all refinements
And confinements that
Have made their island home
So sanitized and free
But soon, too soon,
The day beaks
On this Equatorial spit,
And with the lifting light
Comes all the restraints
Bound to it,
The rats slow trace,
Their tails in tow,
Their tracks back to their mire,
For daylight brings
The weight of rules
That some, strangely, admire;
For Singapore
Is not a town
For rats with spirits free,
For this strange land
Of manmade sand
Is ruled by currency
The last brave rat
Slow doffs his hat
To this efficiency,
And slides into his gutter
Or a hole under some tree,
And waits long hours
In darkest depths
For 3 a.m. or 4,
When rats come out, yes,
Rats come out
In lonely
Singapore.
Spain
Spanish Love
May last a lifetime
May be quite finished
When the clenching is done,
Warm and fragrant,
Blind and romantic
Lonely, old Canadian
Believes what he feels—
Foolish northern blood
Never had a flower
Placed atop his chest
In his tundra home.
Her hair is a plague
Covers all his senses
Breathes in all her mystery
Her brown, smooth skin
The music in her laughter—
Yet somewhere in his hindsight
Between his clumsy conversation
Amongst the ideas
Of his neatly rhymed poetry—
The poetry that now comes
Far too easily—
(Its flow fills all those blank pages)
Somewhere mixed in the sangria—
Somehow chewed in spicy chicken—
He knows this
Springtime Spanish love
Will fade with his novelty,
Will linger
Like a shadow,
Grow long and then,
As the sun hides
Completely, the shadow will
Be gone.
Docs
Bought a pair of Docs
Off a flamboyant and flippant
Gay shopkeeper
In the heart of Barcelona.
He gave me a ridiculous deal,
Sold the boots for nothing;
All it cost me was some laughter,
And the dignity I gave him
Freely.
Switzerland
Verbier-Girl
She has round,
full breasts
And Shirley Temple hair,
She smiles with uncertainty—
The disquiet of someone who lives
Thinking it’s all been so unfair
Her body language is blunt
She has no gift for a
Lingering smile
Her lips don’t spur an
Unfaithful passion
There is no lust between us
(Not even now,
As an afterthought, or an imagination).
Her voice holds
No magic, nor music, nor mystique
Her sentences all end in disappointment.
She lives in a country
That is not her own
And cannot accept
It will never be.
The Swiss don’t pretend to
Open doors for her—
She is Canadian, and
That’s only acceptable.
But why then do
I dedicate this poem
To this forlorn Verbier-girl
(who is not even that)?
Breasts are full and round
And I think once, fleetingly, of
How their weight would rest in my hands,
On my unshaven face—
On the tip of my tongue—
Or perhaps she deserves
The dignity of a poem
Because she will never
Contemplate such,
Nor will she understand why.
Verbier Phone Call
Kaeo’s oh so far away
She sounds so lonely and forlorn
I woke her from a tropical dream
Calling from this cold, Verbier phone
And I try to tell her
What lights look like
Through pale, dawn icy fog
And I talk to her of soft snowfalls
And songs of winter birds
And how the chalets are all
Iced in lovely swaths of snow
And I tell her that I love her so,
To the bone,
And true,
As the long-distance card
Runs out of words
And she says, “I love you”
Once
Softly
And our line is cut in two
The snow falls softly
The silence closes in
As the ice fog licks the sky
On this Verbier morn;
The chill reminds me
Of the warmth that’s there,
And I know a tropical girl who
Sleeps, so soft, and fawn, and warm
And so very far away.
Mont Fort
At the upper chalet,
My mate and I face
The white-blue wall
In Verbier:
The vertical assault,
Mont Fort.
I motion to the gondola that
Carries—right to the top—
Those with enough balls.
There’s only one way down:
Face the face
Steep cliff
Cold front,
Vertical
Mont Fort.
Off with his skis, he
Finds a seat:
“Not today.
The wind’s
Too brisk,
The face
Too brave.”
He orders coffee casually.
I smile and know I’ve come too far
To let this go
Even with these warning winds
That sweep and shine
Mount Fort.
All the way
To the gondola top
I see his shape slow blur to dot
And wonder how
He could have not.
Alone I stand
Atop this precipice
Of suicidal degree
Then out
And off
And so straight down:
I plant and jump
In rhythmic song
And feel my heart
Sing out to
Its mortality.
I stop mid-way
And catch my breath
Surrounded by these mogul mounds
So high,
So dangerous.
I see the remainder of my path,
Chart a quick course,
And out and off again:
&
nbsp; Body
Ice
Cold
Plunge
Sky
Death
And
All that focus.
Such Gravity!
To have skied the face of Mont Fort:
One of the few things
That means anything.
Thailand
Thai Sun
It’s just the beach sweepers and me
The horizon before me is dotted with blue
The islands in silhouette form
The line grows pink at its outer edge
As our rock spins into the burning sun
And that spineless orb she never sleeps
While in our weakness, we must do so
And we give the moon an equal weight
Though that satellite is mere decoration
But you can’t be too romantic about our mammoth sun
That’s like being obsessed with your own sweet mother
Both are just doing what they have to do
Their choices are limited
Their paths run much deeper than our ingratitude
The Bus Stops
The bus stops
It’s such a goddamned mess in here
Blankets, angry on the floor,
Torn pillows leaking out ancient moss
The bus-stop girl and bus-stop boy
Bounce a full-blown condom
To-and-fro
(The aircon cuts cold
My guilt-hot head rattles on the window
Pain)
The condom blows loud
The young boy cries with too much strength
The girl laughs like Estela would at her trapped Pip
The bus bolts to a jerky,
Bad clutch start
No one seems to realize
Any weirdness in any of this
The bus stops again
A man loads bananas
Bunches and bunches and bunches
Ripe and yellow and perfect
I can almost smell their warmth
All may be well.
Korat Bus Stop: 02:24
The Chinamen aren’t smoking
The Yanks don’t say a word
The Thai snow's softly falling
The world is free from guilt
The street dogs have been
Quaffed and primped
The food at this bus stop
Is grand
The husbands all adore
Their wives
This world is on a
A strange new tilt
Dec 08
Man it’s warm here,
gFp is holding steady at minus 35
(its ice-fog wrap blinds traffic to a death-crawl)
She’s down the beach
with her pal, dancing to reggae—and I wish them the best
I’m just hanging in the rich shit-hole
looking at the ghostly silhouettes of the beach palms
people are fooled by their relative wealth, here:
you’re not rich, you just think you are
‘cause you’re finally getting what they've always had—
just think of what they are getting, here,
then scale yourself back down:
it’s a different world,
but the same wage:
we’re still only average,
and when we fly back to our ice-packed prairie town,
the wind will still blow so cold,
and we'll still be only
average.
*(gFp Grande Prairie, Alberta)
Mother River
Misty mountains across the Mae Kong in Laos
Green hills bending backs brushed with soft bamboo
Pachyderms at river’s edge at long day’s end
Mahouts laughing in the spray
River boats fighting high water as it rises
Murky Mae Kong hides all sorts of wild surprises
Rainy season floats a feast of strange collections
Floating in from China, Burma and the Himalayans
There’s no smell like this drenched, ripe river valley
When the rains fall for days like a silent grey veil
Everybody feels the need to sleep take over
And people here are not ashamed to let the urge take hold
Monsoon winds announce the season of the sunset
Colours swath the cloud-crossed sky like mystic northern lights
Water acts as secondary last glimpse canvass
Mother River is now my home
Similans
sky blue
daydream
breakfast tea
crib game
coral reef
limitless
high on air
low on stress
whale shark
lurks neigh
manta rays
sail by
octopus
chameleon
changes colour
changes skin
dive deep
say a prayer
Mikey has
no air
aqua sea,
colours, sun:
Islands of
the Similans
Mae Kong Rains
Rain falls softly, never ending all the day
Makes for sleeping, napping, other bed-like play
Covers all this earth with sweet wet inspiration
Makes us glad to be alive
Green tress dripping in a never-ending sigh,
Misty mountains lifting clouds, but not too high,
Swallows swooping only feeds this consternation
Makes us glad to be alive
Lovers huddled under rainbows of umbrellas
Princes all with their wet-headed Cinderellas
Real love’s headier than sunshine imagination
Should make you glad to be alive
Nearly midnight, I lay with you in my arms
Your soft breathing to the raindrops is the charm
You and rainfall such earnest rejuvenation
Makes me glad to be alive
Mae Kong Affair
Sunset Mae Kong
Fire and sky in
Seamless setting symphony
Colours dashing
Soft caressing
Kissing open mouthed for all to see
Nothing I can write
Can ever paint its
Ever changing stance
The love-motion slow, deliberate
I try and fail with every stroke
Fall short with every line
To grasp its subtle, double ecstasy
The act of merging
Fire and sky
So sensual, erotic
One last gasp breath, exotic
Then sunset death
And sweetest pillow talk
Lingers still on slowly moving water
Finger-painting on his lover
And each night this lust encounter
Repeated always new
What lovers could e’re ask for more
Passions locked on mountain’s ridge
Ending in fatal stillness
Covers up with quilt of starry night,
Then building from that
Each new day
To end in lock of lust
Then die again
That way
Lovers
Ever
Never
Ending
United Arab Emirates
Sand
Your skin
the colour of
Red Emirates sand
to feel you
as smooth
to my touch
as to my eyes
are a woman’s sleeping
shoulders
and hips of
sand dunes
slowly rolling away
in the early morning sun
But like that sand
,
worn
down
from the red-cliffed
mountain faces,
you fall freely through my desperate hands
and are lost
forever
to unknown
places
Dune
Oh, you—that’s the warm sunglow crawl
Straight to the brain
Push the plunger down
Push the hammer down
Fill up with you in all your
Glory—feel you with my tips
Hear your heart beat strong
Round your small breasts
Smell you, iron rich, slight salt, woman smell
Survey your sleeping form
As you spoilt-cat stretch out
And then reform like a tanned dune
In a line of sand-soft silhouettes:
Your head
Your shoulder
Your hip
Slight decline of thigh
Listen to your breath
Your mumbles in sleep
I don’t need words
Like a desert dawn,
You are such
Sensual
Addiction.
Sand Under-Foot
Sand
Under
Foot
Swift current
Could
Be fruit in the breeze
Gathering dust
In the mind
Impossible
The sound we make
Has no semblance of shape
The shape we give
It means changing
A coffee today
Can never be twice enjoyed same
With all of our slight
Rearranging
of
Sand underfoot
United States of America
Washington State Dude
Some dude from Washington,
“The state that is,” sits on the next
Stool where I write
He’s older, sincere, but his
Lines need work, need
Polish, so to speak:
He talks to this young beauty—
Delicious to the core—
Of Washington State Apples,
Of where and how they grow,
Of the varieties and uses:
"This Cameo's a ready peeler”
“Oh, I tell-ya, that Honeycrisp makes-a-beautiful pie."
She looks past him
To anything,
Nods once or twice when he pauses,
He’s bought a drink and likes her;
She must, somehow, be nice,
But talk to your prostitute of apples?
And this your first real date?
This ain’t no Eden—
my forlorn Yankee chum—
And she ain’t no Eve.
Arizona Blinds