Recycling

            Once you have given up the ghost, everything follows with dead certainty, even in the midst of chaos. From the beginning it was never anything but chaos: it was a fluid which enveloped me, which I breathed in through the gills. In the substrata, where the moon shone steady and opaque, it was smooth and fecundating; above it was a jangle and a discord. In everything I quickly saw the opposite, the contradiction, and between the real and the unreal the irony, the paradox.

            Henry Miller, The Tropic of Capricorn

            Once you give up the ghost everything else naturally follows...

            In this natural season of the monsoon,

            where mists block out the horizons.

            Seeing in the distance more rain clouds,

            like an entity that never rests.

            For once in the city,

            the streets feel cleaned out.

            No gawking.

            No loitering on the streets.

            No people standing outside with no place to go

            In these rows of bars

            massage parlors

            art galleries

            where everything is a deja vu

            Of cheap imitation

            Of Cheap furniture

            cheap whores

            with their cheap make-up,

            Cheap lipstick

            Cheap alcohol

            cheap blood

            cheap sex

            cheap clothes

            and their cheap thrills.

            The rain forces them into these holes.

            Off the streets.

            Keeps away the street vendors,

            the stray dogs

            the stray street children.

            Turning corners,

            you meet the ubiquitous presence of muted television sets,

            sport channels

            game channels

            With the same music playing in all the red neon [bars]

            each corner punctuated by a 7-11

            Family Mart

            and Local marts

            Selling the same beer

            the same cigarettes

            the same condoms

            the same potato chips

            Ventilated solely by air conditioning

            With their heaving hum

            metallic resonances

            Everything is wrapped in plastic,

            Sold on a shelf

            Pictured in posters and displays

            The only thing left to do is gather around pool tables,

            lounge around television sets,

            Chat

            Play Darts

            Around the exchange of business smiles with

            Broken English

            German Splatter

            our fake smiles

            drunk smiles

            lustful smiles

            And in between lighting up cigarettes

            bored smiles

            Yawns on tables with candle and liquor

            Overflowing ashtrays.

            With everyone gone, I

            walk down to the beach

            where the water drains with sewage

            Condoms, Cigarettes, beer-bottles, pads, plastic,

            the insignificant dead

            floating out into the ocean

            Consumed by sea-animals

            Recycled back into human-bodies

            In the sea-food restaurants

            that line the pier

            Back into town

            Humans consuming their own shit

            High-heels and sneakers

            Hip-hop clothes

            Football jerseys

            The drainage pipes never stop flowing

            Black is everyone's favorite color

            As their dragging them around the bars

            Always waiting, legs crossed

            All I am able to do is write back drops

            Chasing my story to a close

            Perhaps these metaphors mean nothing

            Like words

            Like life-style

            Like impositions

            A system caught onto itself

            Like Telephones & Televisions
            [ Sealed and wrapped
             In ac(c)ord ]

Copyright 2010, Saranit Vongkiatkajorn