© 2005 Jim Rushton

Nanjing Rain

it's raining on Nanjing late tonight
I want to be the whole city
the ming city wall overgrown with trees
the bones, the taxis, the handjob girls

from smaller towns I have never seen
but I came back inside instead of drinking more beer
at the corner dumpling stall beneath the night club
it was just me and an old woman left

light comes through poverty and madness
all eight of the spider's eyes
the smell of piss, the clean BMW
the feel of drizzle on your naked shoulder

In the Mirror

Leonard Cohen stayed in the room
next to mine in this Mumbai hotel
maybe I'll find myself here
maybe his cigarette ash
blew onto my balcony
Leonard in his late sixties
me in my early thirties
a small span of time
in the mirror of history
a small span of time
to the neighbouring houses
I see him now
as when I found his book
in a second hand shop in Victoria
a boyish face peering out
from the early sixties
when poetry was like Bombay
full of crumbling buildings and crows
as I rode the Cook Street bus
back to my grandmother's house

All work is property of Jim Rushton.

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