Held my breath, took the plunge,
took the flight to the other side of the world.
Disassembled everything.
Started over again.
Still, sadness is the shadow over my shoulder
and Marlboro my one true friend.

The fan fills noise in the corner,
in the space where voices had been.
Still covered in lacerations
from all those who reached out for me.
Keeping busy in the day,
buy and sell in the backwater streets;

if solitude breeds clarity,
then loneliness breeds insanity
and both arrive so rushed and so brief.
No need to lock the door
for no one will ever come.
If I should die, it would take a while
until someone sounds the drum.

I flew so many miles
and still, my sadness has won.

You took me to the Mekong River,
handing my documents over the border,
to the temple of the left-handed Buddha,
in the hope it would all make sense.

You took me to the brink of a stolen calamity,
you stayed with me in poetry; my eventual insanity.
You kept me with your golden voice,
you kept me with your wit.

You lost me with your genius;
how you discarded it.

You drove me to a calling that I could not fulfill,
just make statuettes from the ash that lines my windowsill.
Call it art, or call it a longing,
call it that animal burn for some kind of belonging.

You were a father, you called off the saints,
you cooled my tongue, my off-white yogi;
taught me these songs of pain, these songs of love
were meant to be sung by everyone.

Not the clever mind, nor the metronome heart
that keeps time with this life, that keeps pace from the start,
but for the stumbling folk, the slow off the blocks,
the maladjusted, the criminal; those who only see dark.

That this chip on my shoulder is a flute in which to sing,
that each failure I live, is a story I should bring
to the table of life, to the feast of recovery,
for every impatient soul with a hunger for discovery.

Each broken chord is a chance to sound alive,
amongst the crackle of the static, there is another side.
Another wasteland companion, another strangled voice,
that amongst all this hopelessness; we always have a choice.

To bend or to break in the shatter of our soul,
sometimes the glass must be half-empty in order to feel whole.
That some convenience pleasure is not always enough,
sometimes we must bear the burden;
sometimes we must hang tough.

Because the words will come, the sun will rise,
amongst the debris of yesterday, there is another side.
You took me to the temple and on bended knee I pray,
that I could lift a suicide, with just the words I say.

The streets are filled with violence,
your room of cheap perfume,
let's sleep this off together
and wait till the madness is through.

Another year is over,
another chance has passed,
another cartoon president,
how long will this madness last?

Because every dream of the future
is a ******* nightmare now and
the second Berlin Wall will fall
before it even stands.

So hold me close now
and we'll let this moment stay,
we'll hold onto the finer things
that they can't take away.

I don't know which way to turn,
I know the left isn't always right,
but this life is a **** sight easier
if your skin is pure and white.

Now the police are the criminals,
spilling lies, they speak in tongues,
we'll happily drink down their poison
so long as we all own a gun.

So hold me close now
and we'll let this moment stay,
we'll hold onto the finer things
that they can't take away.

Another year is over,
another chance has passed.
This empire is built on shifting sands
and nothing is built to last.

Another cartoon president,
at least he'll take our country back.

Another cartoon president,
red, white and blue
unless your skin is black.

Cracked heel,
Tiger Balm,
Dust of yesterday’s streets;
Sequins from all tomorrow’s parties
In the lining of unwashed clothes.

Cats sleep in the dirt
Beside ashtrays of white monoliths
Stood brave in a bed of stale ash.

Foreign tongue, the lullaby,
Familiar habits, the birth-ground
To finally be new again.

Spheres of ghost-light
Prevent secrets from slipping out
Into the night.
A hundred beautiful women
And still, I sit and stare.

The air is thick here.
Stone-bench vigils
Through evenings that do not end.

Only strays and electrical hums
Threaten to disrupt the peace.
Tears fall. My hands shake.

There is no reason to be sad.

The beer is flowing
All hot and high,
Insect repellent on the house-
A restaurant by the roadside.
The streets a little easy
Now that the tears have dried,
But the population still dress in black
For the year the King had died.

I’ve been doing a little dying too,
All the faces I have been,
All the places, all the names;
All the waste I’ve come to see.
It piled in the entryway,
Too many obstacles to leave,
Too desperate to sit and stay,
Witness the death of the autumn leaves.

Too much steady state back at home,
Over here, it’s chaos in the streets,
Used to take a pill to make me calm;
I used to lie and steal and cheat.
I used to have a drink to **** the day,
Now I take a load off of my feet,
Nurse it back and eat well and full;
There’s no trouble in falling asleep.

I see the waitress get a head massage
In the middle of the working day,
I mind my manners a thousand times
Still, my brain does not behave.
*** lingers on every corner,
In every blind-alley retreat,
Every time she smiles at me,
Or hands me my receipt.

Now I sing for life and I sing for death
And neither is full of fear,
Sometimes I tell the world to go to hell-
But at least I sound sincere.
At least my poetry is full of me
And not the absence in between
When I wake in this sober state;
When I fall down to my knees.

This is not the perfect life,
I would never claim it was,
But it’s a thousand shades brighter now,
In the shifting of the fog.
My notebooks are all clean and new,
My eyes alight with love.
This is what true living means,
This is not what dying does.

I have been the crying drunk in the hotel lobby,
The mosquito bite in the thin white sheets.
I have been the monsoon rain in the tropical heat;
I have been everything you said I could never be.

On the streets of dust I can eat my fill,
No more clouded eyes, no more ash-filled windowsill.
No more patient wait for my timely death,
No more passing glance; no more loneliness.

I will find my place with this foreign tongue,
On the precipice I write my immigrant song.
This culture shock makes me feel alive,
It kick-starts my heart; I finally turned the tide.

I finally made my peace in this call for arms,
In this incessant storm, I could feel the calm.
Could feel it loosen my bones,
That age-old ache, that I kissed on the mouth,
That I tried to replace

With every chemical within my reach,
With every pill or lie
That passed through my teeth.
I have been the crying drunk,
I have been the victim, too long.
I sit still and breathe.
I write my immigrant song.

The astral bowl was full of green smoke,
the tin roof, the fairy-light canopy;
two friends suffered in greed.
The backwater shed,
a monument of beer cans
blow listless on the lawn.

One says,
"I have not given up on my dreams
I have grown tired of sleeping through them."

The other, an insomniac, glistens:
"Merrily, Merrily, merrily, merrily..."

The television was on mute.
A flag assembles from the garments
retrieved at the end of the war.
A red-eyed stare
as they lament
the dried rivers in the carpet.

One says,
"There are eyes on me all the time
so I drink myself blind after work."

The other, a pessimist, decrees:
"you drink to steel yourself for the cliff-face-
no idea where you are going."

The sky was granite
as they ****** outside.
One turns to the other and says:
"I try to live an honest life
but it always feels like a lie."

The other, still *******, replies:
"we keep our secrets close to our person.
Now please - tuck yours back inside."