On Vacation

Not the hotel bars with well-fed men and risky wives
sipping drinks in new clothes and escaping from their towns,
their jobs, the familiar steps that led them so far away,

not the tanned, puka'd youth escaping from their parents,
out on the beach pushing themselves, opening their own eyes,
finding there will be so little to return to;

not the spotty cellphone service, the merciless street vendors,
the children, the smell, the world in which protein is a luxury,
the finding and the searching for loss, for a change,

the making your own way in the world, the survival
of the most ruthless, of the dawning and realization,
that this is the future of the the world back home.