Pop Song 2 'Hong Kong Soul'

Literary Review, Summer, 2004 by Louise Ho

Pop Song 2 'Hong Kong Soul'

   One has to be vulgar
   To live in vulgar times
   In vulgar places
   They land on your lap
   On moving buses
   There are too many bodies here
   The trouble is
   They are alive
   If dead they can be buried
   Bodily stench
   Twirls into a dance
   Becomes an abstraction
   Reality is
   Which elbow
   To use
   Whose elbow
   To avoid
   Have piecemeal what piecemeal can
   Heaven and earth conspire the moment
   Have get make what you will you must
   Minute
   Elegance of much
   Washed in gutters
   Near the resettlement areas
   By the Carlton Hotel
   Seeps into our guts
   And makes Hong Kong what it is