Track Marks

sitting on the cement platform
watching the kite fights
in front of the lean to sheds

it's hard to know
who is leaning more 
the sheds, the palm trees or you

bending, trying not to break

envying the paper diamonds
pursuing the wind
trying to
fly higher

 beside you the veiled girls
giggle and whisper
bule, bule, bule
and the men jostle and cajole
bule, bule, bule

in the fast track box car to Jakarta
the sweep kids who crawl on animal haunches
pushing bottles and wrappers and cockroaches
cigarette butts and scarlet dotted tissues
hold straw brooms in one skeletal hand
stretching the other upward searching for falling change

later
in the steamy heat of the Jakarta night
two steel hooked hands play keyboards
through an amplified hiss and crackle
while a ladyboy simpers and vamps
turning platform to runway
clickety clack heels keeping time to the iron strike on steel rails
as the train pulls in

then the restless crowd sweeps you into the swell of their panic
and
like a magnet unable to resist the pull
you are thrust into
the stifling sweat box heat
in search of a seat you have not paid for

you pick your way through the passenger cars
pungent with the lingering scent of stale bodies
-the living humans, the dying rats-
gasping for breath in the carbon dense air
knowing the smoke will not clear

a man with a masculine face
and large hands insists
in a flat accentless English
you sit with him

later he will teach you words like enak and rasa
and you will wonder if a man like him
might know
just how delicious hunger is

but now a weathered woman
peeks from behind her veil and
pointing to the ticketmaster ploughing through
the human rubble
places her finger to her lips
our secret, a pact

so now you are complicit
with her
and all the other travellers in this foreign land
who lie at your feet
and press against you from the crowded aisle
when the touts thrust themselves through the midst
selling kriuk, and fruit, and ayam nasi
and air and necklaces and undershirts
in search of deal

but by morning they will all be gone
like a dream you could not have had because
you cannot recall
sleep