Maybe Class

We call this a maybe class

it's at the teacher's discretion

maybe it'll run half the year

and maybe this dance class

will be hip hop

(maybe won't be Irish step dancing)

this is also a maybe tour though

you can observe the new annex

collapse into prison grey round

the corner and here is some art

on the wall (I thought it was

excellent, maybe I'll pipe up).

In Georgetown, Penang, I stepped

from an old mall to a new mall -

it seemed they quite literally tore

the exterior wall off the old mall 

and rammed it into the new one

and the join was a rip in time,

I couldn't believe it,

had to capture this moment of

commerce regenerating.

It was comical, I perhaps shouldn't

have thought so, but the drop ceiling

was coming off and wires were

exposed and everything was

smeared in muck and grease

and human striving and someone

cut it with a line that you stepped 

through into a bright white 

dentist office light, 

contemporary heaven.

Kindergarten is in the new annex

and then the children graduate up into

this grey what was already there, 

turn the corner and find some tourist

documenting this with his

Leica, some tourist who no 

longer scans as a small Chinese

child in 1984, spaghettified by two

tall uncles on his mother's side,

and they curse violently

at his incredulity.