by James Austin Farrell

The Battle of the Bulge

Chaperoned by innocence, the most confident man is a clown

Feelings are foolish half the time within reason

The child is a man, as the man is a child

You hope you’ll grow old and become indifferent

To yourself that is, not the pains of the world

But most of us take our last breaths screaming

You came in intrigued, and you left absurd

It’s a tough life, not knowing its odour

Its colour, its matter, its half-baked truths

And as much as we furnish ourselves with meaning

We’re meaningless troops on a battle of the bulge

Slaughter for stories, grist for the mill

Fragments of history, yet historically dull

Brilliant theatre my best critic raves

Who’ll lie with me when I’m deep in the grave

Five Star

Watching old junk, washed up from overseas

Talking about what they’ll have for lunch

The fine nuances of luxury

How they are surviving the credit crunch

How when friends drowned, they breathed

And they floated on their buoyant rumps

Brushed ashore by a kind breeze

The flotsam of our queer system

The conquerors of swimming pools

Who having crossed the Indian Ocean

Tip tired mules to bring their beers

These observations I often sanction

A bottom feeder must pay its dues

Though naturally I get sick on plankton

And so don’t spend much time by down the pool

Rainy Season

Little hooves tapping against the window pane,

the rain washes dust from the balcony,

I hear it’s still dark in San kampaeng,

the perennial blitz is here again.

The fog was scared off by the screams,

the motorcycles screech when they slip on the streets,

at times like this we love sleeping—-the storm resuscitates the barely breathing.

Sentiments

Adjectives are easy, G –O – O – D, it just means good

H – A – P – P – Y, that means I’m glad

S – A – D means I’m in a bad mood

I’ll tell you a S – T – O – R – Y, story, and I want you to believe it’s true

T – R – U – E, that’s a deal I’m making

Between me and you

Y – O – U, that’s with whom I’m communicating

I, that’s not easy, but it’s a name I use

W – E, we is a strange one

It’s supposed to mean us

We are born thinking, but without words to describe what we see

Before we can speak

What we S – E – E has no meaning

It’s like wakeful D – R – E – A – M – I – N – G

But the dreamer is mute

Words given time, T – I –M – E (even stranger than we), can help us describe where we’ve been

What we’ve experienced, or seen

Except words are mischievous, they’re always up to no good

They’re not like breathing, we learn them, like we learn how to cook

But we don’t know what we’re making

We just say what we think we should

And what we P – E – R – C – E – I – V – E, perceive

Is not so much about truth, than it is about us (in this case us is singular)

Ah, the story, of course it’s about love

The Night Bazaar

Sweet, repellent perfume

Drifts through the isles where the needers want

Where the wanters need, where we all walk on

Where the tourists, touts, and sad rose girls

Come to wear their place in the world

Where fag smoke binds to fake DVDs

Where every film sold is sold to the police

The flower girls they pay their share

Taxed by coppers, me, you, and her

You can dial a number and save their souls

And leave them to the inconstancy of the developed world

A world where we ache for Rolex, Tag Heuer, Omega

Given a chance we’d all like to be superior

And so we set forth to our five star hotels

And we smile at the girls from whom we didn’t by a rose

With embellished wrists and a DVD

We sleep with a stopped watch and a blank TV screen

Tomorrow the Night Bazaar must run on

The same cop who looked nervous will be still nervous with his gun

And the same girl will wield her sad dying flowers

But the tourists they‘ll change, they’ll change by the hour

Note on Author’s Work:

As well as these Five Poems, the fictional piece The Gibbon Rehabilitation Project can be found in the March 2103 issue of Eastlit.