Travel poems
Breakfast
Breakfast time in Kinshasa
Petit dejeuner et oeufs dur
Im hot and lost and sticky
There’s a bad smell coming from the sewer
Breakfast time in Darire
Hotel tries but dreary
Morning maintains my cheer
Depression after beer
Boy in Africa
He was dark brown
Of course
He would be here
Only I the intruder was pale different
Fat and contrasting
A giant
His white teeth smiled up at me
From way below
His hand up to mine
Immediately
Seeking contact
Tiny warm hand
Unafraid
Fear was a long lost luxury
Huge eyes where flies hovered
Waiting to drink
He laughed though god knows why
He showed me his toy
His only possession
A hoop made from a metal hangar
He dropped his hand
Swooped with child energy
Rolled and flicked his pride
Along the infested sand
He came back and I laughed
Clapped my hands
He was suddenly alarmed
The sharp noise reminder
Of guns snapping
And his mother’s death
A month before and so long ago
He frowned and turned
He was dressed only in a fragmented vest
Worthless to anyone but he
His brown bottom carried him away
The boy the vest and the hoop
Remnants now
In my conscience
Postcards
Two postcards I purchased in Rome
To send and help maintain romance
Unfortunately now
I sit under the Jungfrau
And I can’t send the cards with French stamps
Breakfast again
Air-con cool
Different gene pool
Mouth open dry
Bitten by a Fly
Pill, British label
Mocks tatty table
Butter lurks here
Giver of diarrhea
Missing wife child
Life not reconciled
Colleagues not down
Soon though then clown
Give hope, chide
Promise pittances wide
Toast racked came
Eggs feed brain
Sun will cheer
Then some beer
By the night
I’ll no doubt
Be bright
African shoes
The bad shoes of an African
Takes away their status
The shoemender
Tries to give it back
With lots of glue
And skill
He recreated their soul
Resoling
Recycling pride and hope
Yesterday among the clatter of voices
English learned in phrases
Learned from old text books
And past experts
I laid my soul bare to an Hungarian
With a Scottish mother
But they did not hear me properly
They merely said
They were confused!
Yet another airport lounge
A minor one, non international
Bar busy full of Italian eyes
Black and wide
Fat waiter glorified barmen
Who know everything and disdainfully
Indicates seats available
Dispenses sickly coffee
Bitter coffee
Or indefinable tea
A wonderful hugging meeting
Of fat fourteen year old daughter
And mother
All share the emotion
The pressure for longed for parts
All look and smile and stay quiet
People chewing Italian pastries
They are a dance starting
Others read bored
Others hover choosing which table
To collapse upon
Luggage dragged to a new place
Near to be guarded
Protected by glances
I finish my first cappuccino
I look at the sludge
The sweet sludge at the cup bottom
I cannot read my fortune in this
Nor am I likely to get tea leaves here
A gently dangled bag of uninfusable leaf
With a tampon string
I would prefer a tampon mashed
It is hot and I an heating up
Already sticky sweating a different
Odour, a continental smell.
Breakfast
Breakfast time in Kinshasa
Petit dejeuner et oeufs dur
Im hot and lost and sticky
There’s a bad smell coming from the sewer
Breakfast time in Darire
Hotel tries but dreary
Morning maintains my cheer
Depression after beer
Vienna Muse
It is a cold day with dancing snow and rain
I am in my work tower in Vienna again
Danube river and canal below so grey
Traffic's bright lights streaks so far away
I can reflect on my warm days of travel
All the many events to gently unravel
The thousands of people I have seen
My mind sand footprints of where I've been
For thirty years now, is it really thirty
I have flown away clean and come back dirty
Altogether must be over two years away
Statistics only I hear you say
Well I have consumed in all six hundred litres of beer
Eaten 1800 snacks and meals oh dear
Sat in 150 lounges of departures
Travelled in 200 taxis with terrible fractures
I have eaten well and I have eaten bad
Been happy and hopeful and frightened and sad
I have been very up and down so low
Been fast talking articulate dull and slow
I have smiled for the whole of most of a year
Had too much food and too much beer
Groaned loud in hotels crying in pain
Then gone out to drink and eat just the same
Poverty has smashed me right in the face
I have had giant insects sting me on face
I have developed piles and a back of pain
But I still got up, and went back again
I have given my all then sometimes some more
Been in dark dives with a thug on the door
I have shaken black and brown and white presidential hands
Seen what radiation can do to people's lands
I am here though in Vienna a civilised city
Not really grumbling or seeking pity
I am planning more travel you see
Once again to cheat statistical probability
