Monday, December 29, 2014

Poem: Hotdogs For Dinner

Will probably play with this free verse a lot, change it up, experiment, try different words, different memories. This needs lots of work wrote it in 15 minutes.

Here is the first effort, not sure what it is (I sound defensive), just random things I heard and saw in the sex scene world of Thai. I think writing free verse you need to let your mind wander, to flow freely, to go here and there. I tried to do that with this poem. The lines span several years from around 1999 to 2012. Everything here was said to me, and is written as I remember.

UPDATE* I made many changes in this second and now third version of the poem, added, removed stuff. So many different ways this can go.  Will probably never finish it. I guess some poems never end, they are constantly in motion, always fluid and changing.

Maybe with more work I can eventually include this poem as part of a gallery show or in a book. To show the faces, and tell the stories is always my goal as a documentary photographer. Poetry is just another way to do this.

Hotdogs For Dinner
I want to eat your hot dog! The ladyboy spoke
  I snicker and smile and shake my head no

The streets filled with noise, look out it's a rat
  Food to the left, deserts to the right, look its a cockroach quickly in flight

Handsome man come here, where you go sexy man? Stop! Stop!!
   Cheap drink, sexy girl, free food yelled the bargirl from her bar

Man on the street begging for baht
  covers his bandaged leg in red sauce, looks like blood

I suck your cock for 100 baht said the old lady
  She came out of the dark, looked all wrinkled and sick

The street filled with workers, looking for men
  Take me, no take me, not my friend

Mother with baby, hands up, eyes down
 Sitting on cardboard on the walking bridge as people march by

These girls are as horny as I am said the 70 year old sex pat
  But they always say jyeb, jyeb, jyeb (hurt, hurt hurt)

Come her sweetie he coos with a smile, eyes so large, your so beautiful!
 Let me touch you, here’s my card, call me, bring a friend

I smile on the outside
  but cry on the inside said Long the gogo bar dancer

I have a wife I want to be honest to, I cannot do
  Good man said old Nok,  not many here, sit, have food

She had her bloody mehn (period), blood was everywhere!!
   The fucking lying bitch!!!, screamed the very fat man from New York

You want massage the Tuk Tuk driver asked, I take you, free! 
   He smiles, unfolds a brochure 2 feet long, all the pretty girls, young, you want? come, 
   come with me!       

I no have customer all week said 35 year old lek
  Farang not like me no more, I too old!!

You want something different? You should try me said the ladyboy
   Lady no good she not know how make man happy, I do!

I have baby in Khon Kaen said the girl on the bar stool
   My mother looks after, husband go, I send money her

Time to go home, enough of this world
   I need to develop my film, will forget and remember.