Posted in Poetry, Travel, Travel Writing, tagged boats, commuters, harbour ferries, Hong Kong, Poetry, Travel, Travel writing, Victoria Harbour on 31/01/2012| 2 Comments »
39. Hong Kong
The pulsating mass that is Victoria Harbour:
Ferries and junks and boating allsorts
heaving and jockeying for position.
A constant throb of diesel amidst the rolling chop.
Littered with worn commuters,
Hurrying to insert themselves into the vertical living of Hong Kong’s sky high towers,
no elbow room to spare.
jpm
Posted in Travel, Travel Writing, tagged Colombo, Galle Face Hotel, Poetry, Sri Lanka, Travel writing on 25/01/2012| 1 Comment »
38. Sri Lanka
In the Galle Face Hotel, there is an ancient lift attendant supervising a still more ancient mechanical lift.
Smiles creasing the corners of his gracious eyes, from his perch in the corner he politely refuses entry, pointing to the copperplate sign:
‘Take the stairs instead. It’s better for your health’.
jpm
Posted in Poetry, Travel, Travel Writing, tagged Japan, natural disaster, poem, Poetry, population, Travel on 10/01/2012| 1 Comment »
37. Japan
There is a quiet in Japan.
Perhaps the quietness is a way of coping
with the truth of living with 127 million neighbours
on a postage stamp of land.
And every now and then, a sudden revolt:
devastating earthquakes,
horrifying tsunamis.
As if the land itself were protesting its burden.
jpm
Posted in Poetry, Travel, Travel Writing, tagged backpacking, Chiang Mai, hill trekking, Poetry, Thailand, Travel on 06/01/2012| Leave a Comment »
36. Thailand (Chiang Mai)
Our noses wrinkle in disgust at the pong of the returning hill-trekkers, reeking with a week’s unwashed grime.
Happily, we are entirely oblivious to our own odorous stink a week later at journey’s end.
Until I spy the comically familiar expressions of the next group waiting expectantly for our return.
jpm
Posted in Poetry, Travel, Travel Writing, tagged Austria, backpacking, Poetry, trains, Travel, Travel writing on 22/12/2011| 4 Comments »
34. Austria
Clickety Clack
Orderly Austria flashes past.
Suffocatingly precise.
Oh for some fresh air.
I pry a reluctant window open just a fraction.
In an apparently personal affront to the severe man glaring at me from afar.
Who storms thunderously through the carriage to slam it shut in my face.
Twice.
jpm
Posted in Poetry, Travel, Travel Writing, tagged Budapest, Hungary, Poetry, Public Baths, Spas, Travel, Travel writing on 14/12/2011| 1 Comment »
33. Hungary (Budapest, 1990)
Rubbery, flubbery, lubbery bellies
Peeking through the clouds of steam in immodest abandon.
It’s Women’s Tuesday in the Rudas Baths,
Nestled at the foot of the castle.
And ruddy-faced, barrel-shaped matrons pass gossip and time in the public baths
as they always have.
An hour’s respite from their daily cares.
jpm
(posted from Waiheke Island, New Zealand)
Posted in Poetry, Travel, Travel Writing, tagged backpacking, Cold War, Czechoslovakia, Poetry, punks, Solvakia, Travel on 09/12/2011| Leave a Comment »
Košice Town Square.
Safety pinned and superglued,
the sneering punk sprawls his scrawny self beside me on the bench,
radiating a loose-limbed exuberance
at odds with his steel capped boots.
An outpost of desperate wannabe anarchy
amidst Cold War Communist conformism.
Thirsting for my corrupting tales of the Wicked West.
jpm
Posted in Poetry, Travel, tagged Dubai, environment, Poetry, Travel, United Arab Emirates on 16/11/2011| 3 Comments »
29. United Arab Emirates
If intelligent life from galaxies beyond
looked down on earth
and espied Dubai,
what (on earth) would they make of it?
Green grass in waterless deserts;
Palm frond-shaped islands recreating ecologies that never existed;
Improbable spires of glass and concrete grasping for the skies:
Nature subverted … temporarily … by Man’s denial.
jpm
Posted in Poetry, Travel, Travel Writing, tagged Africa, mountaineering, mountains, Mt Kilimanjaro, Poetry, Tanzania, Travel, Travel writing, trekking on 09/11/2011| Leave a Comment »
28. Tanzania (Mt Kilimanjaro)
One foot (breathe)
in front of (huff)
the other (gasp).
Sucking at the thin air.
Boots d-r-a-g-g-i-n-g heavily through chunks of dirty ice and loose volcanic gravel.
My body as leaden as my head is light.
Summiting in Kilimanjaro’s numbing dawn,
5895 metres above the baking African savannah.
Woo-(wheeze)-hoo!
jpm
Posted in Poetry, Travel, Travel Writing, tagged Checkpoint Charlie, Die Mauer, East Germany, German Reunification, Poetry, The Berlin Wall, Travel, Travel writing, West Germany on 02/11/2011| Leave a Comment »
27. Germany (November 1989)
Three days ago.
“Die Mauer ist gefallen!!!”
Checkpoint Charlie, so bleak and forbidding just weeks before,
as I inched my way through the traffic jam of surveillance and barriers.
Now a free-wheeling, riotous East-West human motorway.
I witness the pure joy of liberation
as The Wall comes tumbling down.
jpm
(Die Mauer ist gefallen: The Wall has fallen)
50 words for 50 countries 