The ***** house entryway
was lit up like Christmas Eve.
Two women lounge on stone benches
offering bored smiles between cigarettes
to each passer-by with an empty wallet.
Mosquitoes kiss stagnant water,
hover at their exposed ankles.
******* dress reflects her cellphone halo;
only ghosts of love are alive in these streets.
The Police know not to come.
For the married men
they are cheaper than divorce,
a scratch-off ticket-
like betting on a horse.

Red dress takes a stab at English
taught by her mother
to draw my attention.
Speaks just like my students
and looks no older.
Only came out for dinner
but the weekend is alive:
the sight of her lipstick and stockings
salts my hunger.
I stop in my tracks.
Sound of distant thunder,
I offer my name
and a drink;
she offers me shelter.

Leads me by the hand
beneath the fairy lights
into the dingy bar
of bad karaoke and
football on the big screen.
I order whiskey sours
and we sit at a table
playing games of conversation
over the ashtray as I stumble through
my sentences.
She plays with my fingers,
tells me I am her favourite;
that tonight
she is willing to kiss.

On the second drink
her black eyes covet mine.
Swollen in longing,
I tell her she is the most beautiful
thing I have ever seen
without a word of lie.
Though she blushes
and plays with her perfect hair
I know there is nothing I can say
she has not heard one thousand times.
Leads me by the hand,
places mine on her hips
as she turns to face me
in the half-lit room.


We hesitate.
I kiss her collarbones, her neck,
work my way to her lipstick;
kiss her ******* the mouth.
She deadens in my grip,
begins to work at my belt.
In the half-light we close our eyes-
she becomes flesh,
I become paper,
knowing these were the cards we were dealt.
She pulls on my hair,
when I finally surrender
she speaks softly in English;
she moans in Thai.

Laid exposed in the aftermath
she draws her painted fingernail
across the outline of my tattoo.
Asks for the meaning
but does not understand the answer.
We linger for a moment
before reality resumes
and the illusion is over.
She leads me by the hand
to the funeral wake of the weekend streets.
The storm is over.


Pollution blots out the stars.
She says farewell.
I say

see you next week.

I started leaving the door open for you.
I started to write and live honestly.
Endless nights spent chasing
another song of defeat
across the ashtray
forgetting my own words:

you can create art out of suffering;
you should never create suffering for art.

I started waiting for you.
I started to notice the decline of my moods
coincided with sublime precision to your
tail-lights in the distance.
Half-drunk
I had forgotten my own words:

suffering may be borne out of love;
love should not be borne out of suffering.

I started leaving the door open for you.
I started to expose each sleepless night
and commonplace hangover
as a symptom of a malady
and not a way of life.
You helped me to recall

peace arrives once the war has ended.
For peace, you do not have to fight.

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.

Pink pill turns black
on its tin-foil hammock,
putrid cremation
beneath a butane lighter.
A choir of bullfrogs
sing the advent of a wet summer,
whilst trembling hands gather
to capture the fumes
through the paper vessel
of a makeshift straw.

She gathers spring flowers.
Places them in a jewellery box
alongside the ring he has never worn.
Wide-eyed, she speaks in Thai
on their sweet scent,
amongst the burnt incense
and his vacant, impatient stare.
Tarried for the next hit of nicotine,
for the self-immolation
when he is left to sleep alone.

Lungs tarred with amphetamine,
she will return to her infant son
as if nothing has happened
whilst he wakes
to a morning bed of ash.
Mosquitoes fog the windowsill
as they languish
in off-hand, stubborn ***.
She falters to a ******-
he keeps his cards to his chest.

Dawn croaks its miserable head
as he suffers a silence of symphonies
with no words.
No common tongue;
heart brays over
a pillowcase of pebbles
and a mouth of sand.
She paints her nails,
smiles with professional assurance.
She lives in a comfort

he cannot understand.

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.