Through Poetry

Locational Poem

orange / green / red
neon flashes
enter my car window
and headlight orange
transcending thru'
and over the leather seats
the gas tank empty ticks
like the clanking of a hammer
fixing something
gurgling purrs of tuk-tuks
and the hum of cement trucks
metal sheets hide yet another
concrete building
in progress
cold air con' burns the insides
of my nostrils
better than a bucket of sweat
dripping from every corner
of Phnom Penh's body
five years on my foods must now
be spicy and fried or served by
the hand of a small provincial man
rearing his forehead behind the back of a metal food cart
wafting fresh garlic & chilli
towarda my tonsils
and my coffee strong and black
without it my consciousness
not relieved of the luxury I live
sitting in a country
like an expensive painting on the wall of a grimy slum hut
that no one knows how it ended up there and why it gets all the glory
when the mice are left without prahok