Ocean edge, how your moods do change.

Yesterday your tiny blue wavelets winked back at the early morning sun
And as they ran playfully up the beach I felt refreshed by your soft body enfolding mine.

Today though your long wrinkles of greeny blue make a sulky sound.
A humph followed by a drawn out hissy sigh as you slowly travel up the beach flecked with spittle foam.

I lie here enervated by the overcast hot humid day and feel mildly irritated by this mood I hear.
But I really do not care a jot if you are going to be like that.
So there.

Koh Phayam. Thailand.  Dec. 2011

I took you snorkelling as I usually do.

I looked at you to reassure myself.

You winked back in your familiar way.

Later I looked again and you were gone!

You my long-time companion had disappeared!

You left me to plunge to the ocean floor.

I have searched for you along the arcing shore.

But I know you are forever lost to me beneath the rhythmic shifting sands.

Still winking and counting time as you always have.

Farewell my trusty Casio.


Koh Phayam. Thailand.   Dec. 2011

The noonday sun is pouring acid on my flesh!
It’s slowly boiling me alive in sweat!
Its breath of super heated traffic fumes scours my throat!
It’s torture!
I can’t take it any more!
I must flee!

Now in this fan cooled room
I seek the balm of menthol oil rubbed over me by this local girl.
Ow!
She’s stronger than she looks!
She has my neck in a pincer grip!
Now she is elbowing down my back!
Now pressing iron thumbs into my calves!
It’s torture!
I can’t take it any more!
I must flee!


Ko Tao. Thailand.        May 2017

Two men with smooth shaven heads.

One in khaki shirt and trousers the other in saffron robes

sit silently side by side.

Content to absorb the passing scene.

The legato flow of the complex multi-tones between light

yellows and dark green.

The staccato of the village houses.

The sudden bursts of temple brass.

The gentle rhythm of the small gray clouds.

For them a fulfilling silent symphony of a peaceful world.


But noise there is from within the bus.

From a small flickering screen

An intrusive manic percussion drives itself into full volume

Is spent and them in no time at all is awake again for fresh madness.

as it backs the metallic rattle of automatic fire.

The squealing of tortured tyres.

The throaty challenges of combatant cars.

The crescendos of blasts, tearing metal and shattered glass.

The male voices keep up their roars of victory and despair.

The females, their screams of pain and anguish.

For some a purging cacophony of a violent world.


Ranong to Trang. Thailand.     Dec. 2011

It glided into the bay

The locals gawped

They said they had never seen one so large.

‘It must have cost a million dollars’

It was like a naval boat.

Not gray but white as a gull floating with a huge white egg on high.

Why was it here in such a simple place?

We will soon find out. A dingy is purring our way.

I go down to welcome them. A tall well fed guy from South Africa he says. And a little lady from Thailand

He has an urgent need. He has run out of cigarettes!

I cannot help and I watch him approach locals along the beach for what he and they do not have.

I look up into the lilac sky
And you glide across like a floater in my eye

You are not to me the death dealing cross
Making other mammals freeze and suffer loss

I see you as a rare free soul
Defying the death dealing action that is Man’s role.

                              —————————

You dark flying scimitars with your piercing cry
Wheeling from your element, the stormy sky

With your shrill threats you dare to defy the stick swung with
all my might

Brushing my head and then returning like killer boomerangs
in flight.



                              —————————

With discriminating care you pluck those little fish you seek
With your long, curving, darting beak

If you are disturbed you rise without a cry
And flap away soundlessly into the protecting sky.


                              —————————

You are comic like this rhyme
Which I only pen because I have the time

You flew in with a squawking cackle
That sounded like a football rattle

You have only one objective, to eat your fill
By ravaging that tree with your outrageous bill

Its like a mango eating other fruit
Lychee, som-o, champoo, kanun, all will suit

You return a piercing stare with you target eye
And to the starer it magnifies.