A Sense of Place

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)?

  Perhaps it is because her

  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

  Too much like my life

  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