SIN

Hot pants drop for cash. Now fallen spears change into silvery

Snakes of light plucked from each lake’s modernist whorls

That lead us where the bougainvillea bush bespoke

For each lakeside testifies to concave curves

And loggias on gated streets. As if it were a bird the fan

Thrives in the sky. Hot skins spreading apart,

Divas change into banana pants. Her billionaire Westerner

Has erected the terminal overpass. Jetlag filled red lights with meditation.

x

How to shift shape in a loop, keeping your daughters

Rich in silver. Hoardings induce trances.

Admire instead his apples of semen – or, if not, her cars

Instead of Western humps. Reptilian communities

Get too close to slip-roads while thorny trees present themselves

To blot out the airport overpass. Oh, but ever larger Nagas

Offer formidable barriers briefly tusked in steel skin.

Everything slows for rivals lit by that drop in culinary affairs.

x

We lighten the bow string later. A case of snakes reflected

Proof of the Divas origins. Smooth as angels pale as the locals

You string together a blue chain lengthening behind litter bins.

Here the gates erected changed to the more distant

Complexion of powders with the rising up they get for cash.

We branch off from the storm into a rival hood.

Taking off silk and their coils instead

Such harlot shores slip their five blue skins.

x

A fence slides away from trident rows along such fitted gates

And lanes beside men the gods look very like.

Divas shape the skin’s pastes – though skins are never rents.

On while away into rest. Time protects the fallen sentence

From the knowledge worms that dine on a god’s discarded phrases.

So how to cruise the angels with many heads.

Serpents such as your seven snakes go looping

Under corralled scaffolds, bushes. How to string the sentence

x

As if it were a bow. How to string concave phrases

Together in a chain of looping curves as if you were the bird

With that rising terminal. Ever larger hoardings go up.

They get erected on scaffolds, erected to blot out

The sky along the overpass from the airport. Now

We branch off, smooth as silk, taking slip-roads that lead us

In a loop under the overpass, off and away

To lakeside loggias, gated communities.

x

Here, where the bougainvillea thrives,

Everything slows for the humps. Oh, but such gates

Present themselves, bespoke for each billionaire:

Trident gates and tusked affairs, rows of thorny spears,

Modernist barriers and such, in blue steel or rich in silver whorls,

Keeping your five cars corralled – if not your seven daughters.

Never get too close to their bushes though

In case of snakes. Admire instead the fan bananas

x

Spreading apart behind a formidable fence.

Time slides into jetlag later as we dine beside lanes

Of reflected light lengthening away from culinary rivals

On each lake’s more distant shores. A hood with many heads

Protects a meditation from the storm.

Rival Nagas slip their skins and shift shape

Into gods or men. The gods rest on their coils.

Discarded skins are proof a shape has changed.

x

Of a silvery blue, the complexion of the Divas

Testifies to their reptilian origins. Snakes change into Divas

As Divas change into snakes, and serpents offer such apples

As induce trances plucked from trees of knowledge.

Skins filled with Western semen litter the bins

Lit by red lights. Pastes and powders lighten the skin,

So that the locals look very like fallen angels.

Fallen angels pale as worms cruise the harlot streets.

x

Her Westerner, his skin fitted, briefly rents her bush.  

x

x

The bird with the rising terminal is the Gawow – which is the Thai cuckoo

x

About anthonyhowelljournal

Poet, essayist, dancer, performance artist....
This entry was posted in art, Poetry, Thailand and tagged , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

1 Response to SIN

  1. Visited the wonderful National Museum in Bangkok. It seems to me Thai art does not differentiate between “art” and decoration – as so often we do in the West. Thus this poem is a “statheron” – all words in it must be repeated a symmetrical number of times (twice, four, six times etc). Symmetry interlaced with decoration seemed so vital in the halls of the museum.

    Like

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