$10K Lullaby

What's calling me
but the street lullabies of Mongkok,
those car-less roads allowing only footsteps
to traverse the entangled constellation mess of
tourists bargaining at market stalls--
foreign voices unyielding and tongues
unfamiliar to my eight year old ears

all translated
into the Mid-levels vernacular—
cynical, mature, inebriated
and desperate suits and high heels
stumbling in a concrete maze
slowly flooding with yellow street light,
but somehow
finding me on top
of this high-rise metaphor,

first time sleeping in a foreign bed
in the twenty odd years since I've left
this place, restless and in need of the lull
of all that’s happening outside the windows;

all the drunken mind numbing bliss,
all the bedtime stories I've missed.