Selections From History Repeats Itself In Paradise

Bagan
The heart reflects
   from frosted crossroads
From teeth of idols,
      graveyard hanging gardens,
            winged lepers bludgeoned to the least of ravers’ havens
Shirks apologies for germicides from whence it sprang,
   was wrestled into submission,
         was buried and raised again,
Glows through straw men’s law of the jungle
      saving table scraps for those who let it die,
Slaves for derangements as the monster
   too mature for us to be the world’s bastards for ignoring,
Sings to cheat the hangman for the number
      of times it’s been the end
Swills radium in the psyche’s ransacked annexes
   as the witch-trial revivalist it’s grown into;
The pinned minotaur whose fighting blood’s as up
            as instant fame,
With a loathing of being asked,
         even as the victor,
      whether or not it ever
            told the truth

Shanghai
The land where logic comes to dry out,
      to die,
   to tax its welcome long enough to claim it’s here to stay,
Begging the city to remain as it was to see what it is—
   A clown-school shanty with nothing to call its own
      & all the smoker’s coughs in the world to call for it,
Nothing to profane but failed-god kilns in which to reinvent
         its model horrors,
All the shredded grandeur that matters to parody
      & savagery upon savagery to redefine—
One militant eccentricity hatched unto
   a braided wart of a continent,
Ready with the whip for the minds it ravages,
      the souls & spirits it subverts
            & the breakdowns it orchestrates;
                     O Shanghai,
                     dear brother,
                     I salute
                       thee

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