Southeast Asia
Waking to a gecko on the ceiling,
Breathing freely in camouflaged living,
I realize I have slept beside him
In so many small, musty rooms--
A million breaths in sync . . .
In love with my displacement,
I am absent to the world,
Imitating the dreams of monks,
Bowing in the shadow of Buddha
And meditating into existence
Thousands of yellow butterflies . . .
When I am too close to home,
I crave the scattered smells
And lost colors of mysterious cultures,
And myself moving in rhythm with them--
I am dispersed forever
In tropical winds away from home,
Swaying with coconut palms and dancing gods,
Spilled, like incense, across pineapple fields,
And across oceans like loose sand.
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Submitted on May 02, 2011
Modified on April 18, 2023
- 34 sec read
- 3 Views
Quick analysis:
Scheme | AABCDEFGHIJKLMNOKPQR |
---|---|
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 661 |
Words | 114 |
Stanzas | 1 |
Stanza Lengths | 20 |
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"Southeast Asia" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 13 Jun 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem/84796/southeast-asia>.
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