We are
very good at enjoying holidays,
A teatime trip to the British Council,
A walk to the light show over Love River,
But not a river of love on a New Year’s Eve,
With the only entertainment on TV,
In an aged hotel with
paper-thin walls
to hear but not be heard at all,
And a
forgotten mattress board,
removed for hard rioja asleep.
Twilight evening at home with Taiwan news
Making herself something as I ponder rum,
And scroll down from Mongolia’s zero death toll,
To the unveiled line that “Taiwan
can help”
Chastised for quipping “Mongolia can help,
too”,
As she turns off the set without asking,
Leaving me with silence and cats,
Should I have gone out alone to enjoy the evening?
As the missus misses bed with smartphone spats.
For the wine rack we had gleefully
chosen,
She's still roiling after calling the police
on a neighborhood
witch she likes the least,
For insulting her mother’s private parts
Making it topical with my proposed position,
To get it off her chest and put it with derision,
For suggesting there were better
things to talk of.
That I had only the responsibility to listen.
To take it without betraying a preference for
happiness.
So we go through our evening singularly,
My dreamy Desdemona lifting her skirt to fly,
For a tryst in her car with windshield darkly,
My Roasting potatoes for a yearning love taster,
Encouraging her warmth hearing men bast her
Expats elitists not knowing loving Taiwan,
Is prerequisite to loving her long
So long from an intimate place to relax,
a place like Mongolia where there is no flack.
January 5, 2021
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