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I have had the privilege of travelling to 9 countries since starting my job in Kuwait. I'll be going to Turkey today, my last one for this first year. Following is a poem for each one, which I wrote in a bout of inspiration on the Balcony Walk, near Jebel Shams in Oman. The Turkey poem is in the pictures :-)
Bahrain
Bahrain for a visa run.
A fresh face
A new place
Didn't know
The contract
Didn't know the particular
Crossings of cultures
Didn't know how to 4x4
Didn't know many people.
Met an egotistical
Dubai architect who drove a Dodge
Charger.
I thought architects were refined.
There's a summary of the region.
Architects drive Dodges.
Dubai
Emirates is an airline
It is also some sort of
Cobbled together masquerade
Of a country.
It has desert
Hot dunes of
Fine layered sand
Which shimmers
Burnt copper
On top,
Light red innards
Of each dune
Waiting to swallow
Wheels and foolishly
Bethonged feet.
Lebanon
Impressing people in a warzone
Is easy
The boss at work
Was ok with it,
But,
Admiring,
A girl from work
Tried to get me to stop
I was going for another
Girl
Who didn't like me
Jordan
Jordan is so easy
The attractions keep on
Coming
Keep getting better
You just have to get in a car
And it's like you're a conveyor belt
Tourist
Iran
I met a rocket
Scientist in Iran
In a ski resort
One with 50 year
Old rickety tele-
Cabins
Oman
Trying to talk on
Balcony Walk
Trying not to be
Unbalanced scrambling
Trying to do
Trying to be
The things that are not me
There is plenty to
Be happy about as me
There is plenty to be
Proud about as me
There is nothing to worry about
China
Beijing is a
Roiling cess pit of stinking
Heart stopping pollution!
No, not today. The weather,
Air,
Clear, clean and the
Rice wine crisp as the stripes of a tiger
DPRK
Dee
Pee
Are
Kay
The DPRK
IS what
George W
Bush
Said it is
It IS, disappointingly,
Evil. I so wanted
To prove him wrong
With my Axis of
Evil Ski Tour.
I wanted to show
The world we'd all
Been misled. That
It was us in a
Truman Show,
That North Korea
Is a place like heaven and
Capitalist rulers must therefore
Rail against it.
This is not so.
Adults are treated like
Children
In North Korea.
Kuwait
Kuwait is a
Relieving patch of boredom
Between three of the world's
Most conflict ridden countries.
Saudi Arabia funded the
911 attackers and
Iraq paid for it
Iran with their Russian nuclear
Reactor
Just never lets us all relax
The people of Kuwait
Though none know it
Have made my life
Seem like it was worth it
Overall
That my mostly wasted
Struggle
Through the lows and lows
Of a higher education
Didn't end up just paper
In a frame
And the sigh of wasted
Energy
The dappled
Disconnected
Unplanned
Scattershot vision
Of my future
With which I assaulted intruders who asked
What are you doing with your life
Somehow
Here
Is real
That I should somehow in the end
Help the environment
Is the greatest luxury of
All
In this
Privileged
White
Male
'Western' expat's existence
But it's not enough
I have seen that I can have some
Now I want more
I am
Glutenous
For virtue
A pest of positivism
If I can fix the environment
In the middle of one of
The world's
Largest oilfields
Can I not now have some
Equality too?
Can I not now
Push a vortex of
Culture change through
Like a social sand blizzard
Abrade away
A method of family patterning
Modeled after the
Best old world Egyptian style opulence?
A person for my hands
Another my feet
Whilst here
Sitting
Collecting non communicable diseases?
Well now
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