My Picture: Bronze Sculpture, 798 Art Zone, Beijing, China
That Summer Feeling
Philosophy
A Poet’s Thoughts
My Picture: Bookshop: Hoi An, Vietnam
A late night,
or early morning
listening to Gill-Scott Heron
singing about prisons
and a sense of loss.
And the words keep coming.
I know about loss.
Each day I struggle with the
echoes of another world, imported
into dialogue.
A tired pen trying to catch an
errant voice passing by,
struggling to find the right words.
Now, suffering autumn’s castigation
lamenting in my awareness.
And Gill-Scott Heron, now he is
singing about no rain, no rain
and how to survive on sadness.
I get this…..
The strange death of poetry
My Picture: Bookworm Bookshop: Hanoi, Vietnam.
“Do you write about love like Neruda?”
“Do you understand the nature of immortality
like Dickinson?”
“Have you read Robert Frost and Wallace Stevens?
“They are American you know?”
“What do you think of Dylan Thomas?”
“Oh…..but he is Welsh”
“And what about Sylvia Plath and the confessional
movement?”
“She is a woman, but an American woman right”
“Of course we cannot not accept you,
unless you tell us about Whitman and the
American epic”.
“Oh yes… one more thing.
We don’t want any poems that
caustically indict bourgeois poetic values,
or celebrate the desperate……
like that Bukowski fellow”.
“OK?”
“Yes Sir….”
Especially Time
My Picture: Mỹ Sơn , Vietnam
I remember the loss,
streams of tears
mounted on elephants.
Pits of empty words.
No more roots to anchor me.
No one to lay with me.
Overseas and drifting forever.
But I’m not going to cry all the time.
A Journey Home
My Picture
Some bus journeys are ordinary,
open windows and traffic running by.
People chewing the food,
watching the world photographed
on giant hoardings, the junkies junk.
Here, it doesn’t matter what Trump does
or how much oil and blood there is in the desert.
You just watch disinterestedly, and ask for more coffee.
The weather stays mostly the same.
And who cares about the Whooping crane
or the Eskimo curlew, they’re probably dead anyway.
So I listened to a podcast, David Byrne
on a desert Island and watched the world go by.
Passing unknown homes and people
screaming at each other.
Nothing left to fight for
and yet angry about the repeats on TV.
Another Day
My Picture: Cafe, Ho An: Vietnam.
Sitting alone
in the café.
Just four other people,
two couples talking
to each other
without effort.
I remembered the day,
and all the people
telling me what they
want to know.
It was nice to
see a bit of them.
But they always want
a guru, a god or another
Steve Jobs.
Hard Moon
My Picture: Cover of a book of paintings by Lai Long and Bich Ngoc: Painters from Vietnam. I met them on a trip to Vietnam.
The hour is late
and I can’t sleep.
A hard moon,
consumed by ill-fate,
screws the night.
It came to me,
how it all slipped away.
A cold truth wooed and won.
Gravely, a tune of sorrow.
But I rather liked the
idea of being bad
And watching people
reproduce more of themselves.
The Harshness of Life
My Picture: Xinxiang Cafe, China
A coffee in my favourite cafe,
escaping the harshness of the
cautious loners.
The coffee was hot and clean
and the staff always say “hello”
in practiced English.
Tonight a woman told a man
they were finished.
She told him he could go to hell.
Someone once told me to go to hell.
It was just after we made love,
and the phone call from a strange woman.
I only met her once, when I was drunk
and probably said ‘I love you’
That was my mistake.
Restless Farewell
My Picture: Wei River: Xinxiang, Henan Province, China
In the darkness a dream came to me,
pale and waiting.
Beauty to destruction,
your head tilted but your face lost.
Rapturous and green eyed,
I drank each word from your mouth.
A sensuous scented sea of colour,
standing naked under unknown eyes.
Infused with lust and exposed skin,
I found a restless farewell.
And through the depths of blue I see
the last star, no longer dreary to be nobody.
It seemed by itself remembered love,
moments of breathlessness, but no sickness.
A cacophony of never ending whispering words,
dropping like flakes, fragile and complete.
Gentle as you should have been.
Lying in the darkness, I made a last wish
I am here.. standing alone
left looking …..
As you touch my soul and bleed into my dreams.
Awakening Solitude
My Picture: Jin River, Chengdu, China
A Wandering Poet 