@3And the end of the fight is a tombstone white with the name of the late deceased and the epitaph drear: "A Fool lies here who tried to hustle the East."@1 Rudyard Kipling Perhaps the polluted air of the city brings it out, just as strawberries raise up hives or brandy brings on gout. A middle-class, rosy, young man, called Ted, still jet-lagged, knows why the name of the town's Bangkok. In a dimly lit dive he acquires two figures in women's dresses who blow and roll and leave him chagrined by remembered caresses. The knowledge that history's bunk makes the sum of experience zero. He buys a blue spoonful of sapphires which smuggled and resold our hero intends as his final rebuttal to prove to his father who's smarter. But finding they're small, flawed junk, he hires a threatening thug who, with refund and gems, absconds leaving Ted to reflect that the only honest people are blonds. Down an alley's crooked elbow he joins a shirttailed circle of men dealing Eurasian poker. The antes gulp paper and coins of value unsure as the proof of their booze that burns like cayenne. Waking perfumed by his vomit, he searches about for his wallet. How come masterful, white, realistic, American know-how's misfired? Still he's optimistic. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...DOMESDAY BOOK: JANE FISHER by EDGAR LEE MASTERS LOST AT SEA by THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH FALL IN! by AMELIA JOSEPHINE BURR VERSES: ON THE TRANSMIGRATION OF SOULS by JOHN BYROM A HAPPY LIFE by WILLIAM HENRY DAVIES LIFE by WALTER JOHN DE LA MARE A TRIBUTE TO MOTHER by INNICE M. DRAPER ALL FOR LOVE, OR THE WORLD WELL LOST: EPILOGUE by JOHN DRYDEN |