Turkey (2 Poems)

Sandalwood, myrtle, cypresses, Sweet gum, laurel & olive groves Oleander & dates and pines Cross winged falcons & turtle doves Wild bee honey & cliff top goats Lynx and jackal & snuffling bear Bougainvillea in perfumed drifts Red tiled roofs in the azure air Shrimp & swordfish & quick sea bream Zebra stripes in a twisting shoal Coral, amphorae stud the reef Crayfish, octopus, sponge and sole Ottoman, pirate, Roman, Greek Temples massing on nearby Rhodes Trojan princess who launched a fleet Amazon warriors, Homer’s odes Minaret, mosque and muezzin’s call Baths were the scented tulips bloom Hot bazaar where the venders trade Jostle and haggle for elbow room Marmaris All day drum beats pound and pulse Western bellies blob in bikini girdles This is Butlin’s with a Turkish twist Date palms soar like birds In a heat that could strip paint The ambrosia’s chips and beans, The nectar’s Turkish beer Hans, Ivan, Gunter baste like turning kebabs Water is kingfisher blue. Showers of diamonds Splash from swimmer’s heels A rainbow has melted and welded with lie-lows and lean-backs George from Crewe’s on a Crusade to get laid A phalanx of bathing belles shield their eyes with shades Bronze Hector goes striding past, seeking a British Helen A chalk-faced man sips from an amber glass Flat buttocks, withered thighs, Wearing a goat’s beard on his sunken chest Boys like filleted fish, dart like barracuda in the shallows Their vertebrae’s skin tight. A honeycomb of lustrous light and shade, ripple the pool A bulging Danish bum floats like a large brown pastry Rising up in the tourniquet of its trunks Acres of balconies teeter up to the sky Pill boxes on stilettos A traumatized boy tells of a knifing, high in the Turkish mountains Over and over, to anyone who will listen. Ten heat stroke victims comatose, pass out