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flashsgl
My Pictures: Taken today in Harbin, Heilongjiang, China – Walking on the frozen river.
Songhua River
Philosophy
A New Year in Harbin
My Picture: Harbin this evening….New Years Eve in China
Fingers slowly freeze,
on this New Year’s Eve.
The fast dipping moon,
cold sleeps around my face.
Clutches of deep red lanterns,
parade to empty streets.
And ice stars dance,
sick from half melting
and clinging to a desperate sun.
My skin stings in the cold wind,
ice white and torn inside.
I can see my breath,
now singing for the first warm day.
A winter day in Xinxiang
My Picture: Xinxiang, China.
A sky full of black,
a delicate insight
to a day gray day dawning.
Standing alone
I can smell the end of winter sadness,
joyous despair and a pale spring rattle.
The stars ease their tears,
I watch them in the cold February air.
And trace the shapes of mood and gesture.
Words have magic
My Picture: The last treatment today.
Hiding the pain
I spent the afternoon
listening to John Coltrane,
‘The lost album’.
And as winter fights to stay,
with rooms dark and somber.
I started to figure it out.
Nature’s single breath,
and an eternal now.
Thoughts in a silent cafe
My Pictures: Taken today.
Sometimes it is difficult to straighten
my saddened thoughts.
I make my bed, drink some coffee
and catch up on the world.
But it is not always enough.
I muddle through the day
swimming upwards, backwards
and from time-to time
finding moments to write
and see things differently.
On occasions I read Bukowski,
then I realize that things could be worse.
So I read Dickinson,
to find a tangible mind and spirit.
In the end, my thinking
always seems to end up in another room.
A landscape of the spirit,
blue sky and thinking open mind.
Pain Diagnosed
My picture: A grey day in Xinxiang
After the pain….
drop by for coffee
…..a mind of evolving language
that gives me comfort.
A future frays like a cut wound
…. but at least today
the pain splutters out.
And my words are open.
Unseen Songs
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My Pictures
Wandering in a bookshop in Xinxiang,
I came across an Underwood 310 typewriter,
an Olivetti by another name.
It was not in good shape….
probably taken too many victims.
A young woman gave me a book about
the sex life of Andy Warhol.
‘You might find this interesting”
I thought this was a strange combination
of histories mingling….
In a moment of lighthouse flashes,
I felt a warm familiar breeze….
a self-moment of age.
There and then
I wanted to love someone.
Until death comes to visit me again,
the wind that brought me here still goes on.
How to show your age
My Picture
With daylight fading beyond the
silence, I went for coffee.
I was reading Bukowski….
‘Notes of a Dirty Old Man’,
when one of my Chinese friends joined me.
A young doctor with love rocking in the wind,
who is on the path in the desolate landscape.
“What are you reading?”
I ordered him some warm milk,
“A book about the space between
the covers of books……..
and why some poems have lived long enough….”
Unsure if he understood my words,
I suggested he sit down and order
this poem a glass of shaojiu.
We both found this funny…..
What we overlook
My Pictures: A new bookshop opened today in Xinxiang.
January cold in Xinxiang,
I met a young woman
who told me a sad story
about a boy from England.
She looked battle torn,
her eyes clouded
by his tormented life.
Hidden from the sun…
was herself…..
a blazing grassland
at its summertime height…
loving with strongest feeling.
With wounds of past regrets,
I told her that responsibilities float
away on each breath,
by the here and now and tomorrow.
Even the darkness has hope
My Pictures: More treatment today on my shoulder …..
The sorrow pain agony,
still continues.
It is never satisfied.
Coughing here and there
on the Xinxiang streets.
Yet I can still see,
the sun streaks that kissed your hair.
And the daily love dance,
broken, but now stronger.
Reborn with death together,
where hope had seemed left behind.
Now each drop of ink,
preserves a love lost in time.
A Wandering Poet 