Selections From History Repeats Itself In Paradise

Bangkok
There is nothing amenable
to human empathy
   about
Bangkok—

Bangkok is a decrepit predator,
So forged from disdain even the least of beggars
   would scorn its company
One who contrived the torments of the damned
      & remains their most ruthless exponent;
The whiplash specialist you’ll thank
   for giving you the face you deserve—

A rot opera spurred to bastardize the hellbound,
   only in tears when it’s salted every call of the void;
Apostate of the poorly tuned inferno it frets to perfect
      for its inhabitants
Who cheats the truth we all pretend
   we’re ready to suffer;
One that would fuck you and leave you wanting more,
      if it deemed you worthy;
but instead
         just leaves you
      wanting
               more

Lijiang
Nightmare reincarnated—
   In corpses plumped by speckled flesh
   In death rows scrubbed from demolition blueprints
   In hysteria left to blister until its sores are ready to cook;
As free-will fetishists glower from the photogenic sides
         of simplemindedness,
   Weary enough of the world to join the ranks of those
      whose tragic flaw is living better with hatred than others;
As strapped legions drag marshes where ideals would lie
         were they made for chains
   For common-prayer melancholy
      that frustrates the shoelace universe
         beyond the mountains of the sun
   Where piggish mystics spurn the cosmic swindle’s relics
      of dimestore brilliance
               in seclusion beyond the farthest star,
   Soon to be spun out before the firing line
      & conned out of whatever recourse
            to the lost childhood they made their pact
                  with the devil to preserve;
As locusts quake in padded trunks
As Christ’s disgust remains as boneless as his innovations
As time inverts assassins’ last resorts for common sense
   And returns with moon-June-spoon barbarities
         cribbed from future terror lullabies of the violently enlightened
   With glee-club requiems thawed for trial by ordeal
   With dog-and-pony meltdowns clipped by generations
      fractured out of conscience but yet to make
                  the final, bloody break

Leshan
There are more ways to say your youth is over
   than there are to revel in it as it abides;
To scapegoat its misspent hours
   with more devotion than nostalgia can exhaust
To prod its once & future selves
   as shrews of old replaced the eye among the blind—
And as many ways to scourge its embers from whatever road
   the past allows to lead to the same ending
As there are to lure it back