Coman: Six Poems Copyright © 1998 by Brad Comann and Cultural Logic, ISSN 1097-3087 Six Poems Brad Comann Buddhas Polyethylene catches on parts of bodies tooled out of pink sandstone, and carts trundle the head-pieces off, to be eyed in a nearby shop, centuries of heads pried, cracked from torsos leaving bent knees behind, smooth as abalone, leaving thin robes folded back revealing one of the shoulders or a wheel etched In those meditating hands--Law of Cause and Effect now a flawed symmetry between walls of brick and mortar--those fingers like thick branches too commonplace for collectors who want instead the faces chipped from prangs expensive beyond belief although undecorated with squares of gold leaf attention saved for the bronze images that survived Burmese troops and the aging sunlight: only one of Him sits in the former temple where a monk trims a votive candle and the One looks immovable, eyelids on the verge of closing on us who surge by the altarpieced fast as the slowest walk, the visitors afterward Comann 2 Copyright © 1998 by Brad Comann and Cultural Logic, ISSN 1097-3087 in the silence of those eyes perceiving our rib cage, our solar plexus, our breathing or does He look for the heat's thought? while in the shade of rotting trees a few of the world's teenagers hang around in dark bluetic hair, languish in Jim Morrison T-shirts, their hands busy, veins and fingernails glowing like copper insanely hovering over a Game Boy the size of an ancient tablet, with others enjoying a glance at war comics, at their first porn, as we might have done in Fu Manchu's braids, in worn out Levis although it's their day now, to want something else, to say Why not this? using American words for their spleen and penis Lyric: Udon Thani Next to a cinderblock wall crowned with green and white glass a baby girl is naked below her tanktop a 50 printed on the front She floats on toes across a powdery soil, hands cradling her plastic bottle, lips tugging on the formula What train? What Thai mathematician has a window seat and gazes at the footpath's baby's butt? or thinks on the next step in a theorem? Station bells chime all-clear Godling, running to a crawl Comann 3 Copyright © 1998 by Brad Comann and Cultural Logic, ISSN 1097-3087 Show of Teeth: Indonesia Follow the signs when the road cuts left. Women's voices will start pleading with you, Monkey love peanut. Given in, at a kiosk in the shade, near the stone gate to Monkey forest, gate to mythical monkey, tongues and ears covered with dry moss. Inside the forest they have no love of trees; each sits by a trail waiting for you, resting. You clutch that purchased bag of nuts, doling them out like chocolates although the monkeys look as if they'd gag on one more bite, often dropping them--one at a time to the already littered ground then start to eat each other's lice, or run at you, hissing to make you jumpy, a finger poking in your direction, to some purpose. Their show of teeth a kind of laughter. Sex Trade Hours to the Northeast a Thai weaver sings of the living past lilting as she works that ancient silk loom her legs dancing along to the shuttle until a tourist stops at her door thinking it's part of the mock village She weaves along but to him it would be nice if she'd sing on top of him but apparently not and he returns to his rental car a four-door to find another goddess under twenty no condom before he flies home to San Diego Comann 4 Copyright © 1998 by Brad Comann and Cultural Logic, ISSN 1097-3087 and the dead present Have a good one weaver Penang, Malaysia 1. A Chinese courtyard necks of plumwine bottles top the cement walls--watch how kites keep to the sky lengths of twine knotted together. 2. Down a sidestreet, on a shortcut I took, a row of pigs pranced, they flew. O the heights! I saw no rack of huge steel hooks, no butcher hosing off the steps to his shop. That night asleep on a train, in a top berth, the pigs had grown: heels and pink tights. Marginalia in a Guidebook Comann 5 Copyright © 1998 by Brad Comann and Cultural Logic, ISSN 1097-3087 "The danger of the road is not in the distance, ten yards is far enough to break a wheel." -- Meng Chiao When your five senses cower, obey your guide--the mind's one fear a fear of mindlessness. Muslims pray to a loudspeaker. No duty free. This restaurant has moved to Jalan Lawa. Guesthouses, losmen, hotels all reasonable: try The Majestic or U Thong. Buddhists meditate to the green smell of incense. You are a foreign body entering the blood stream! "Caning or Death for Anyone with Drugs." The bemo and bus stations open late, close early. The Christians swear to God.