Ode to Hanoi

Hanoi, Ha Noi...potent and latent, deep as lakes, veils rise from my eyes. Silken constructed, built up, rushing, pushing forward, flowing with time. An ancient, modern insatiable emblem of rough, rotten stomping capitalisation, a relic, a token of ritual awoken and breathing 2000 years in time.

Cracked streets, hugging heat, a sweaty drumbeat, the pulsating rhythm of this city of mine. A rugged hand up, a friend to cross the road, a small kindness, smiling disdain of this ignorance. A fast paced mad hattedness, desperate focus, demons for dollars, wealth on a backdrop of women with baskets, babies, work, hunger and history, crunchy French bread, intricate streets, thin buildings and a worship of the dead.

The evening falls quickly on rooftop beauties, coloured edges jutting towards the skyline, filtered yellow lights, green, growing hopes all dancing quiet and silent above busy concrete streets, cracked and hard, riding motorbikes rough and broken. A life of ups and downs, a series of near misses, close calls and above it all a hazy, thick sky enveloping a city propelled forward quickly flying through time.