Departure lounge. Crown of tears
probably dried upon my father’s shoulder.
One year before I touch down again.
Everyone will expect some change.
Tried to swallow consciousness on the Bangkok streets.
Too much heat. There is no familiar face –
I cannot even read the road-signs.
There is no culture shock:
I had lived with that my entire life.
Made friends with the strays
for we had a common place.
Caught in no man’s land:
a need for hunger,
some awful drive to be free.
Left Bangkok for the coast.
New faces to hear old stories.
Born new, kissed each night on the mouth,
shared a hotel room for the month;
relinquished every memory
in a flood of beer,
old tears, the reservoir
to cleanse ourselves of doubt.
Dictated each depression
to a room full of strangers
until I could frame every disgrace,
put them to bed
until I slept full and new.
Fell in love with a singer,
red hair and a voice
that climbed a ladder to heaven.
Bid farewell in a country of mourning,
wore black until I found colour again.
Descended each rung
until I found that rock bottom
was still much higher
than where I had come from.
Wrote poetry and songs
nine hours from the foundations
I had built upon.
Black-eyed and clueless,
wrong side of the classroom,
I tried to teach a foreign tongue
in a place where I knew nothing
and no one. Far from every addiction
that once anchored me in place,
I shaved my face, pressed my shirt,
made amends for every cigarette end
that once painted the frame
of all I had amounted,
all I had done.
Fell in love with a town,
a pink sunset, stretch of rice-farms
and apple trees that patterned the view
of all I could see.
Still broken, still maladjusted,
still craving those twisted words.
Take my motorbike off into the drumlins
each time that I fear the worst.
Still broken, still singing
a song I cannot sing,
yet each muffled string,
each half-worn verse
is a half-formed reason
to rehearse
the melody I gather
each fateful, live-long day,
I cry out for meaning
before it fades away.
C
