The Cerebral Catalyst

Liang Penang

The water is heavy molasses
hard to imagine there was a tsunami
here in the '30s

The same bird keeps calling out
to the females
as do I to her, she's in

in my wooden longboat,
which drifts past palm trees
as palm oils waft past us

from wooden houses on stilts
at the banks.
An old Malay, he fishes.

Kuala Lumpur

She's up early to go to Law class
in her tank top and skirt
sunglasses on.
The Imam sings.

After a movie
she's on the grass with a notebook under her
looking at the twin Islamic star towers.
The Imam sings.

Bangkok

It's moving like it's set to bhangra music:
all the massage parlors, clothing stores,
schoolgirls in uniform, perverts.

It's seething like a flu patient
yet calm as a Buddhist in prayer
wearing his shaved head and saffron robe.

Manila

She's up in the afternoon
nose stuffed up from too much
alcohol. She washes the cum off her.

Tonight it's back to the bar and club
to the drinks and touches
the winks and clutches
hope that tomorrow
will be real
not another fantasy—
her cell phone buzzes.

Fukuoka

Tidy as a golf course
no, a table with doilies
or a man with a bowtie
or nurse in a frock

Yet neon as a prostitute's pussy
with women in clubs and collars
demure chicks seducing the brothas

Seoul

Cute as Fukuoka but dirty
disorganized, destroyed and rebuilt
natural with mountains, temples, palaces
then modern
while all the time insecure
of the Chinese-Japanese vise grip
while all the time arrogant
of an invisible haecceity.

Hat Yai

Incomprehensible scrawl:
Arabic and Thai
the traveler puts his backpack
on back and gets on back of a bike
cycled to the bus station

Later, in the police station bombs
will expertly rip the windows out.
Arabic encroaching on Thai now.

Bangkok Revisited

It's fireworks or gunshots,
no bombs.

Two lovers hop in a taxi
back to the hotel

where they sip beers and watch the news.

Phnom Penh

The motorcycles dust bowl
the place now
where the Khmer Army
all boys
took all the guys wearing glasses,
the doctors, the teachers,
the nurses
to labor camps
to the killing fields
to the Tung Sleng
S21
past the burnt out
Thai Embassy.
It was the Vietnamese
that came in
stopped Pol Pot—
the tortures and murders
continued
even while the
liberation soldiers walked
the capital
beside the Tonle Sap river.

Terenganu

A gecko scares the hell out of her
I bolt into the bathroom to kill it.

It chews a cockroach.
An old Malay: it's monsoon season.

Singapore

I can't help but imagine the traders—
the Chinamen coming by boat
the Malay chiefs
the British and their opium dens

the shophouses, the prostitutes,
the drugs

then it's so sterile, yet chill
like South Beach, Miami
with its soft neons
its deco
its design
its balls;

how could Malaysia let it get away?

______________________________________
Ralph-Michael Chiaia — a.k.a. RMC, a.k.a. Parliament/Ralphadelic, a.k.a. the Scruff Daddy, then changed to the In the Buff Daddy (recently changed to Pea Diddy, then Brie Diddy), with his sidekick the Notorious P.O.P.E. live on MTV, that'll do: back to the spiel — is a surrealist and realist writer. He has been compared to Italo Calvino, Julio Cortazar, the Yeti, and The Notorious BIG. Check him at his blog or at Literary Chaos, where he is an editor.

posted 10.29.07.

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