A Sense of Place

  down by the dikes and

  gently hold my hand?

  India

  Indian Connections

  Mumbai beggar's hand

  formed of

  bird's nest sticks

  reaches desperately

  big eyed

  naked

  brother

  clinging

  apelike

  half asleep

  nest building

  crow

  grapples with an

  unwilling branch

  shakes his head

  and looks right

  through me

  like the vendor

  on the corner

  apples from the

  Okanagan Valley

  shielded by

  a broad umbrella

  are sold next to ripe

  papaya

  me and those apples

  so very far from our

  orchard home

  Mumbai Weekend

  Traffic insanity

  Acrid fumes

  Bites white-eyes

  Cartoon taxis

  Beetle-bug rickshaws

  Homeless bands of beggars

  Black bikes

  Trains more packed

  Than cattle cars

  Shared air

  Is heavy

  And all bodies

  Breathe

  As one

  Heaving,

  Wheezing lung

  The food, they say,

  Don't eat it

  Or you'll be seated

  And sick

  And shitting

  And sorry

  Mumbai weekend:

  Dirt

  Poverty

  Heat

  Stench

  Compact masses of weary humanity

  All this, all this, and all this

  And

  I will remember most the

  Wonderful smiles

  Of

  Bombay

  Pretty Indian girl

  Pretty Indian girl

  Your sari's wrapped

  With austere dignity

  Your hair is pleated so well

  But in this monsoon of poverty

  You often wonder how

  Pretty Indian girl

  Dust on the roadside

  Cakes your naked feet

  Fetch water from an old well

  And slowly ponder the

  Daily meal

  And then you wonder how

  Pretty Indian girl

  Your God, the gods, My god!

  Why can't they see

  You live your small life so well

  How can they watch you so blindly?

  You often wonder how

  Pretty Indian girl

  Your cousin works in

  Mumbai city

  Her family eats so well

  To sell her body

  Used to seem so base

  And now you wonder how

  Japan

  Japanese Wife

  If I had a Japanese wife

  I would not spend—true—

  Half my life

  In a smoke-filled karaoke bars

  With business bores

  And plastered whores

  John Denver songs a-ringing

  Paunch-bellied little

  Japanese men

  Drinking Johnny Black

  And singing

  I would wrap her—so—

  My little fawn from Kyoto,

  With love

  Her pretty smile

  Would draw me,

  She wouldn’t fill her lonely

  Days with lonely friends

  Shopping in a haze of

  Sadness; disillusionment

  Loud ringing

  She would have my love to hold

  As I would be her lover true

  Bring flowers home for

  Her soft hair

  Try to write her verse

  Both powerful and pure

  Listen to her arguments

  She would hear my soft laments

  And I’d make such soft, sweet love

  With her

  Blood

  A history

  So complete

  Such noble

  Heritage

  Grandeur

  And spectacle

  Such sorrowful

  And greed-soaked shame

  To be splashed so

  Liberally over all

  That dignified past

  The sham of leviathan blood

  The lies of rationale

  Technology to be

  Copied and admired:

  Such a clever race.

  Why, then, so soaked,

  So stained in blood--for what?

  Minute financial gain?

  Such lies

  Such shame.

  Kuala Lumpur

  Stasis

  Sitting in a bar that

  Used to hang the Croatian

  Checkers, used to play

  Football and rock and roll,

  Used to have

  A wisp of a fag

  Who slung beer and squealed

  With delight at even the most average shot

  On the table—oh, how he

  Loved to squeal—

  The barmaids were

  Transvestites…

  Where are those naughty girly-boys

  Now?

  Now they play boybands

  On the set in the corner;

  The bartender’s straight-laced

  Stone-faced,

  Tough to crack a grin.

  “Stasis” need not be a bad word—

  Some things should not

  Change—

  Autumn in the Tropics

  Autumn is most oft most missed—

  Its restless leaves from trees dismissed—

  In lands where Autumn has no name;

  Here, natural must, each season same,

  Here, sun-drenched water wets my feet—

  In Canada they’d love this heat,

  But I would give each ray away

  To feel cool Autumn’s kiss

  One day.

  Machinations

  Taking pictures of cold steel

  And reflection glass

  And gasp in awe

  At all of this machinery—

  Can it be art?

  These Meccano machinations?

  These human creations?

  Bolted with parts,

  Pumped cold with blood from

  Air conditioner ducts

  Through heavy, metal hearts.

  (Previously published in BOLD)

  Poser

  Poser posing for the shot

  A man, by god, a man

  Tussled hair by his own hands

  Smiling naturally

  Looking off o’er wondrous land

  So dramatically

  He makes his girl re-shoot the shot

  To catch his spontaneity

  Such a wonder is to see

  This poser posing

  Naturally

  (Previously published in BOLD)

  Hearts of Darkness

  White face skin cream:

  We so skilfully sell them our colour—

  Our absence of colour—

  Our pale perspective;

  Sell them our ideas

  Of nose shape

  Under the small neat knife

  Or chemical relief—

  Better than their herbs ground in mortar, applied with poultice;

  Free trade that works this way, one way;

  We then slip in Jesus,

  As it makes it all easier

  If they become similar…wanting sameness:

  Same fears,

  Same hell:

  We sell

  We sell

  We sell them.

  We used to enslave their masses

  With insidious addiction of sweet opium,

/>   Or we’d chain them to rubber tree

  Threats

  And decapitations

  And roping and raping wives and children;

  Now we politely poison them

  With our homogenized culture.

  We are ever the imperialists,

  Ever

  Spreading our pale

  White Hearts

  of Darkness.

  What Would Conrad Say?

  Sitting out a wicked storm

  In a trendy road-side café

  Sipping Earl Grey and

  Watching this side-show

  Of humanity, wondering at

  How we’ve come so far:

  Our progress.

  Two North Africans

  Sit with a local

  Chinese woman; the

  Blackest of the two

  Strokes her arm and

  Talks loud over the

  Pounding rains and the

  Ominous warnings of thunder,

  His sentences punctuated

  With raw strokes of lightening:

  This devil has his seductive flair.

  They motion to the blonde

  Australian back-packer

  Who sits—smoking—behind me

  Reading her Lonely Planet,

  Unable to see them from her table.

  The Chinese lady wanders

  Over

  And sits like a friendly local

  With the Australian:

  “How you doing?

  Some storm.

  How long you here?

  You travelling alone? How brave.”

  I listen to the setup and know

  She’s been marked;

  This is post-modern, post-post-colonial

  At its best-worst.

  What would Conrad say

  About this turn?

  What should I say?

  I leave in the lessoning rain

  To let modern evolution run its course,

  To let Africa get

  A small

  Piece back.

  Laos

  Children Playing Ball—American Pastime

  Smiling Laos children out playing in their killing fields:

  poke a hole,

  plant some food.

  Hit an “orange”

  lose your life

  (or at least one limb).

  In the days of the secret war,

  where the tactics were American terror,

  they dropped a million in one country:

  kill the threat, the menace,

  stop the movement;

  the country wasn’t even at war!

  So small—tennis balls

  landed and waited to

  score: unforced error!

  Some are orange,

  some are yellow,

  meant to destroy

  young children at play:

  stop the movement,

  snap the threat,

  break the children

  like brittle dolls.

  But those Yankees—

  damned Yankees—

  don’t want to comment

  or help clean up their mess (twenty-odd years later),

  and so

  the kids will

  continue being children,

  and the old Laotian farmers

  will burn the parts they can find

  when the smiling children

  “Play Ball!”

  (American Style)

  Singapore

  6 a.m. at the Elizabeth Hotel

  Alone through rains that start to fall,

  Through early morning lack of light,

  And lack of love, and absent mate,

  She wanders through the vacant cars

  Whose owners, all well coupled, kept

  With warmth and love—without regret—

  Behind the bleak, unblinking eye

  Of the Elizabeth Hotel.

  He exits through revolving doors,

  But only once the air’s washed clean

  Of perfume from his tawny whore

  He knows he’ll never see again;

  The taxi waits, quite monolith,

  Except for lights now wide like eyes

  And blades that wipe the tears from skies;

  He’s soon to ride far from this night

  At the Elizabeth Hotel.

  She turns once as his cab door slams;

  Headlights on high, he rolls away;

  She wonders—in this high beam trance—

  If she’ll be captured in some way

  That might ignite romantic flare

  That could replace his rough, plunge thrust

  With fingers, soft, through her dark hair

  And whispered words: love, trust, and care.

  But taxi only motors by,

  And water from a puddle formed

  Within this half an hour’s rain

  Splashes on her perfect calf

  That just one hour, or so, before

  Was flexed, for him, seductively;

  Slowly she lights a cigarette—

  And throws the match, now doused by rain,

  Towards the blank and vacant stare

  Of the Elizabeth Hotel.

  Bangkok Dreaming

  Midnight in a back street

  Walking lonely as a whore

  Trying to find some Bangkok

  In this lonely Singapore

  The streets are neat and tidy

  The roads safe and secure

  The smiles manufactured

  The prices set and sure

  The cars are new

  The rivers clean

  (as clean as they can be)

  The smokers have their sections

  The birds assigned to trees

  And within lines and ropes

  And fines you’re happy

  And you’re free

  Still I tramp through

  Darkened walkways

  As tired as a whore

  And strive to find some Bangkok

  In this ruled Singapore

  I guess you don’t miss freedom

  If you’ve never known its choice

  And confines could be comforting

  If not seen as bleak tyranny

  If you’ve only ever whispered

  Never sung with your sweet voice

  But me

  I long for chaos

  And the stresses that it brings

  The wrongs and rights

  The long wild nights

  The sadness that it sings

  The laughter ringing

  The stained streets

  The open smiles and shoeless feet

  The chance of dance and danger

  In a simple alleyway

  But now

  For me

  Abandoned

  On this manmade sandy shore

  I wander late and lonely

  As some love-struck country whore

  And dream of distant Bangkok

  In this lonely Singapore.

  Inevitable

  One degree and change,

  This sandbar, turned capital,

  Equatorial rain,

  Tragic and wonderful

  As day slips into night

  The slow wash of black

  Long-legged Chinese girl

  Seems so Inevitable

  Sleek Grendel-crow

  Waits till the timing’s right

  Glides swift and low

  To table’s top and steals a bite

  He doesn’t find his courage in a bottle

  Swoops by one more time

  Spies another beak-full

  That he will stealthily swipe

  Stomach’s now full

  For Aesop thief

  Who’s black as coal

  Inevitable

  Seems so strange,

  Again a stranger, even here:

  Passport stamp

  A cigarette, a bottle of cold beer;

/>   Where did it go? Who let the

  Daylight seep away?

  Traffic now glows

  Under Halogen-lights’ flows

  And blinding slit-eyed tears;

  So without warmth,

  So without care,

  So Inevitable stare.

  Birds squawk trees—

  Braches must be bent from them,

  Thick-black-feathered-leaves

  The din is overpowering.

  Fully away from the sun,

  Even in this dividing time…

  Inevitable.

  Alone, alone and so

  Very far from home;

  To live in ellipses space

  A bleak moment between

  Here and there

  It doesn’t matter where I am

  People are people everywhere

  Tall Chinese girl

  Seems so unapproachable

  Long legs, night-black hair.

  All men must stare at her—

  Untouchable, regrettable—

  It’s all so Inevitable

  Rain Falls

  Rain falls without sound

  I crouch alone

  Under bamboo’s fringe

  And watch the drops

  Cry all around then

  Smoke a silent cigarette

  A stranger in

  An island town

  With only ember’s glow

  To hear the sighs

  Of this brave heart

  In lonesome Singapore

  I wish I had

  A hand to hold

  A naked neck to slowly kiss

  Some hair to tease

  And brush away

  To frame her face and downcast lips

  But on this lazy afternoon

  There are two hands, no more,

  So sits alone,

  This one, brave heart,

  In lonesome Singapore.

  When Rats Come Out

  You know it’s cool

  When the rats come out

  When the rats come out

  In Singapore

  When warm winds blow

  And night wraps round

  And tourist men

  Have Found their whores

  And loathsome

  Rickshaw’s

  Squeaky wheels no longer

  Haunt and hunt the quays

  The rats come out

  The rats come out

  In Singapore

  When expat Brits

  No longer brash

  All in their beds do snore

  Bar lights now dimmed

  And Christian hymns

  Will not be sung

  For hours more

  The rats come out

  The rats come out

  The rats come out

  In Singapore

  In this brief breath

  Of quiet time

  When busses do not roar

  And rats feel safe

  From prying eyes and ears

  Of Singapore

  They enter, apprehensive,

  From the gutters