bamboo blinds
heave next breath death
sag
again
no life
to rest
in this mid-morning
slaughterhouse heat,
this heartbreak, tin-roof town
holds no one in,
no gates to lock;
movement is too ambitious
with all this too much sun
I’ll say,
“I’ll wait
again
till darkness nudges slow
then I’ll be gone,
sure as hell,
just wait until darkness…"
but then
with-a-five-dollar bottle
coax myself
to that thin belief
that rain will come
rain will come
CNN. –What?
“This is CNN”
My wife’s asleep
It's the only English channel offered
“This is CNN”
The reporter declares: “In a tradition as old
As time itself, the world waits for Santa Clause.”
What?
What?
Did I hear that?
“This is CNN”
What?
A western Pagan-Christian tradition
A few centuries old
What?
As old as time itself?
“This is CNN”
This is western ideology
Spewed shamelessly over the globe
Like translucent—transparent if you
Are looking at the depth of the coverage,
At the objectivity of the news—often views—
Spewed like translucent
What?
“This is CNN”
Like Lorne Greene’s voice of
What?
This “reporter” looking at Beijing—riding
About on his motorbike—talking of how
And welcome him,
What?
Are they dogs or dolls?
“This is CNN”
The reporter speaks:
Now that this city has lost its “Chinese”
Identity and has westernized,
It is truly wonderful—it now never sleeps,
There are friendly faces everywhere,
Every hour—
What?
It’s the greatest city in the world for him
And his wife
“This is CNN”
Well, try practicing Feng Shui,
Or demonstrating for a more open press
See how they smile then—
Or try going someplace where
They haven’t chocked-on and swallowed
Our homogeneous, western, capitalist cum
“This is CNN”
This may be—but it certainly
Isn’t the news—objective? Intelligent? Fresh?
A story on how tourists are few in Bethlehem
This year—
What?
How about a story of how the Jewish state
Imprisons Palestinians,
Steals their land,
Like Hitler to the Jews—
Like Americans to Guantanamo—
What?
No, this is CNN
And what should be
The news.
Large American Men Man-Talk at a Baseball Game
4 men, who in their
Very American-ness, speak
All together in forced-loose
English.
The subject of their
Seemingly meaningless, transparent
Talk is a Texas team from one
Man’s t-shirt.
They use like-terms that form
Some form of comfort zone between
Their four large selves—
Large heads,
Large jaws,
Good jaws,
Milk-fed bones:
“That defense rocks-blab-bla-blab-bla.”
“But from the three-point line-bla-bla-bla.”
They carry on somewhat mock
Aggressively with guts sucked in
And chests puffed out
Quite obviously, like peacock cocks
All feathers and cocky strut but
Where are the hens that should be the
Targets of such flamboyant rut?
Could it be in their macho,
Manly, masculine ways,
This is their guise for such
Otherwise uncomfortable proximity?
(perhaps all this bravado show
is only so the others will not ever know
how each they yearn to feel the others’ hard
hands and soft lips
never kissed?)
This also lends a wonder to
The men of distant lands,
Like the centre of the Africas,
Where, I’m sure, men too
Gather over their tea and
Talk, but not of basketball;
So what could, then, their man-talk be?
Perhaps—unlike this superficial, fantasy-filled spree—
Men there, touch hands and talk of women,
Children, and their poetry?
Beyond Borders
Cathay
We all think of that
Stewardess, don’t we?
Come on.
Even les boys in business
Eye that strapping steward with
Mile-high possibility.
Old men are re created
Through the impossible beauty of that
Cathay Princess.
The old, fat, seatbelt extension lady
Thinks how that buff, young Asian—
The one pushing the duty-free cart—
Could make her dry wings so wet-spread
In the soft morning sun.
The young man is hard
Under his seat belt and blanket
Every time that
Seductive Suzie Wong serves
Him his beer,
Brushes his arm—and only his—each
Time she passes in the
Tight cattle-class aisle.
She thinks of nothing but a
Wonderful bed and sleep
Once she gets to Vancouver,
Her second favourite port of call.
Getting Home
Sounds so simple,
But not really knowing my origin,
The task is unattainable, intangible:
I am a Canadian, yet
I don’t know French;
I was born a Christian, yet
I don’t see god;
I am a husband who
Doesn’t understand love;
I am a human, but
I loathe so much of humanity.
I am a poet who writes for no one:
I defy mathematics, for although
I have all the parts,
I am not the sum.
How do I get home when I am
A fractured,
Alien,
orphan.
Cement
It came back to me—
Like a dust-cloud removed—
After a hot day of pouring slabs
In my chicken and duck coops
It came back to me, I’m 48,
I must have been 12 or 13, then
It came back to me here in the tropics,
On the Mae Kong pouring aviary floors,
It all jumped back to me like light,
Like wind out of nowhere:
The old man and me
Pouring the front sidewalk and
Laying in stones;
My dad was about my age, now, then,
And I thought his poetry was simple,
And I write now because of his example,
And he poured decent cement
And I thought it was all gone
I had no conception of that day
And it rushed me so suddenly
The veil rent with a magician’s speed
And I can smell the grass, see my dad’s sweat,
Hear the love in his kind, tenor voice;
Miss him even more,
Wish I’d given more thought
To his imagination.
Author
I am a Canadian who lives and writes in Southeast Asia. Presently I work in Kuala Lumpur, teaching English Literature. I was born and raised in and around Shuswap Lake in south-central British Columbia, but I have also lived in northern Alberta. I went to school at Grande Prairie Regional College, then I moved to Edmonton Alberta, and attended the University of Alberta From there I moved to Bangkok, Thailand and furthered my studies with Michigan State University. I am married to a wonderful woman, Kaeo (who is on the cover of Bangkok—Just Under the Skin). I have three sons, Kritsana, Heathcliff-Manx, and Keats J (who’s on the cover of Bold). We keep a small farm in Thailand where we raise organic fruit and produce, and ducks…a great number of ducks.
When not reading, writing, or teaching, I spend time with my family, my friends, my ducks, and my trees. Trees provide a certain sanity and calm in a world so often too concerned with the insane rush to destroy itself.
Notes and Thanks
Thanks to the world for being so…weird. Just to look at Thailand, Malaysia, and then Singapore: three countries on the long tail of Southeast Asia, and three places that couldn’t be more diverse, three countries that would easily fit into my province back in Canada. Cities—countries, for that matter—are women. And once you get to know them a bit, you simply have to write about them. It’s what you do when a woman intrigues you; it’s all part of the poetical dance.