I have come a long way.
Those endless nights spent clouding the mind
to a comfortable blindness
where I did not have to witness
the war at my own front door.

I have come a long way.
Locked in fear I could not communicate
with my foreign tongue;
learned that good company
was the mere salute of open arms.

Learned to swallow breath
as I once did pills, *****, and cigarettes
to find that patient calm.
Chemicals promise anaesthesia;
only pain is left when supplies are gone.

I have come a long way
from the departure lounge,
staring at heaving grey skies
and contriving a paradise
no one could hope to find.

Walked suicidal through
tourist-lit streets of central Bangkok.
Half-drunk I wondered why
I continued to breathe;
why my heart refused to stop.

I have come a long way
from believing happiness
is a steady state you can attain
through time-lapse images of victories
and failures you forgot.

Fell in love with an older woman
who would sleep beside me
when she could not see her son.
Through nights of *** and amphetamine
she would sway through each melody

even when the meaning was lost.
Taught me how to speak Thai in the moonlight,
left food on the handles of my motorbike
when I was too hungover
to face the day.

I have come a long way.
Travelled 6000 miles to learn
that home  means anything
from a constant pleasure
to some happy accident.

That love is not pillow-talk;
it’s the rain on the windshield
that gives shelter from the storm.
That truth is not what you hope to find.
but the words that you meant;

fractions of yourself
you could never leave behind.
I have come a long way.
I have made love in enough hotel rooms
to tell you the ashes of yesterday

can be both the aftermath of a flame
you cannot replace
and the fertile ground
to change your name
and start over again.

I have come a long way.
I am still my worst enemy.
Every day is still a fight;
each moment filled with darkness
when I cannot see the light.

I have come a long way.
Stood brave in the entryway
of every opened door.
Made a toast for all the people I could be;
all of the people I have been before.

She left me white flowers
on the balcony
on the day she stopped trying
to win my love;

the first time I watched her tail-lights
with a crumb of regret.

Used to leave a loaf of bread
on my doorstep
whenever she could not find me,
drunk, alone;

furious in her offer
of easy company.

She left and in her absence
I found little solace
in the poetry I kept from her.
All these pointless words;

another lover lost to meaning,
another lover lost to impossible

dreams of perfection.
All this time afforded to me
to form my words of purpose
and total inaction.

I have never met someone as beautiful as you.
I can’t believe you are going back to China.
I can’t believe that I will never see that face again.
I can’t believe I didn’t at least try, at some point.
You are leaving forever.
Every day I stared at you in awe.
But that was the problem - I just stared.

The first winter I ever loved
coincided with my introduction
to Summer.

Three years younger,
she had defeated China
and in her wake lay one thousand men,
mouths hung open;
straining for her ear-shot.

Every taxi driver
spent more time looking in his rear-view mirror,
every ticket collector tarried
in the purchase; a hope to extend the moment
that he could be there, with her.

Used to watch her across the office,
her pencil skirt, precise eyeliner;
the way she would smell her tea
as it brewed in the flask.

Used to stray outside her classroom,
listened to her speak Chinese
to a room of students that would listen intently
as unfamiliar tones spread
across her easy smile.

She sang her tentative songs
over vague karaoke nights,
we sang together in English;
our neighbours sang in Thai.

I took her to the mountains
on the back of my motorbike,
she talked softly in my ear;
her legs pressed close to mine.

The first winter I ever loved
coincided with my introduction
to Summer.

The most beautiful woman
I had ever seen.

I lay still beneath her friendship,
bit my tongue in misplaced passion.
I stood and stared as she walked on by,
into the arms
of anyone’s

but mine.

After a long stay of depression,
he awoke on his motorbike
beneath a searing rainbow sunset.

The mountains arched silhouettes
as he tore through the highway
in the still-image of youth.

Slow evenings spent unwinding,
numbing himself with changes
and the crudeness of a new tongue.

On the shoulder of Kalasin,
in a nowhere-town province,
he had tasted everything.

Ate with his hands
on decorated tables,
trekked the petrified forest

on Christmas Eve;
somewhere between all of this,
he finally learned to live.

After a long stay of depression,
he rolled away the stone.
Found himself six thousand miles

from anyone he had known.
No one can speak English here.
Today, he learned the word for ‘home’.

She left me a gift bag
of coconut oil, expensive shampoo,
instant noodles, and bug spray.

Focus slips as she
presses her face to the bus window,
staring out at a town
she will never see again.

She believed the town was a prison
until I taught her
how to ride a motorbike.

Dodging ***-holes and stray dogs,
I clung for my life,
primed for purgatory-
whilst she screamed love ballads

at the top of her lungs,
believing that if she drove fast enough
she could make up for the time she had lost.

As ghosts appear
along the country roads of Kalasin,
the drumlins will be
a mere sequence of pixels

and Chinese whisper memories.
I smoke, lean on bad habits
across the fence of solitude I built

so meticulously by hand.
Another night spent drunk
under the stars – alone.
Desire spikes a fever in hindsight,

thoughts stray to her upper thighs,
blue eyes, and untouched lips.
I wonder whether reaching out

for somebody in the dark
would have been enough
to abate our bespoke
and desperate loneliness.

She left me as another moment
I let slip through my fingers.
A life-time spent

wringing my hands.

I've been caught up abroad.  
Whirlpools of mixed feelings.  
If I think back,
It's always a broad.  

She seems nice and innocent.
Lively and petite.
But men for money she does sleep.

If you've spent some time
You'll know it's hard to judge.
When there are no other options.
I'd do the same - fudge

She has great qualities of those I've seen.
Simple needs and simple desires.  
Which drive a person world's apart.  
Maybe that's it and she's just too far.

We had a culture and a humility
That descended into poverty.
It's much and none.
Desperation and opportunity.

I see the beauty and the pain in the eyes.
Of those victims to this tourist culture.
That has us all losing our morality.
I was a person and now I have a price tag.

Traditions that hold us back as a people
That spiral the young naive and uneducated towards empty hearts.
Forced to partake at the mercy of baht.

We weren't always this way.