My Picture: Jin River, Chengdu, China
Awakening Solitude
poems
Night Father
The Independent Newspaper. UK.
The United Nations High
Commission for Refugees,
told me that 1,500 died
this month.
Or maybe they told me
850 lives were lost
in June and July alone.
It’s probably fake news anyway.
But I hope someone finds a solution,
I’d like to help,
But I haven’t the time today.
I know you tried to save him,
He had a home once,
pictures from school,
his favourite toy, Buzz Lightyear
made in China.
Now his home is the
mouth of a shark, and
one dead night swimmer
is the same as another.
You tell of your anger,
fear and shame?
Of your hopes for the future,
as the world watches you die
A washed up tiny young life,
you say ‘sorry’ for disturbing the
sangria on a Mediterranean beach.
The world speaks English,
when we write poems.
And the poets would like to help,
but their hands are tied.
Yesterdays Sun
My Picture
Most days on my way to the café for coffee,
a homely comfort in a foreign place.
There is a man I see, a bleeding soul
in this vacant place.
He sleeps mainly on the grass verge,
always rough and unwashed.
Lays like an animal too ready for winter.
And the people pass him by.
The whole process shows desperation,
no such helpmates or a plight to bear.
A sickness of the mind, steeped in
ancient rules of deception.
Some see an empty space, some a sleeping dog.
And some an inconvenience from where they lie.
None of them see the whispers invading their
perceptions.
Yesterday the sun was setting, half asleep.
I remembered once feeling the
sun, and seeing half a yellow daffodil pale
blowing left and right.
Another heart broken race.
So I took some coffee and slice of
coconut cake to the man.
Undone with misery, he said something
I did not understand.
I thought, I am bitter sometimes
but the taste of life was one day sweet.
I was loved by goodness, and that was enough.
October Lament
My Picture: By The River
A noisy October morning,
yesterday’s wind crows above
a day less brief.
These hours will be slow now.
One memory released at
break of day, another falls
in the morning mild.
You asked me why I came,
I told you, a time after doubt.
A leaf that fell,
on an October morning.
So cold and broken away,
I could not speak.
Faded Beauty
My Picture
Xinxiang backstreets in hard rain.
People at every junction,
walking in and out of my ears.
Dancing their bee dance in the
margins of returning light.
I wrap my coat around you.
A personal memory of lost hope,
burned in the zig-zags, runs
and circles of a fire spun moment.
The evening stars, a pattern of sorrow
humming their exquisite extravagance.
Now and forever, lamenting a loss
flamboyant and luminous.
Nothing good will come of this.
Disco in China.
My copy.
Quite, alone
trying to write a poem.
And Disco comes on
in the cafe.
Yes…disco!
Donner Summer I think
“Love To Love You Baby”.
My mother liked this.
A sunny cloud,
drifting swiftly by.
Tantalizingly floating
from 1975.
It was up there, the
sky still high,
and a richness in the land.
I hear the song
so clearly now.
Sunday Morning Moments.
My Hulusi.
For this Sunday morning, fate
has already brought me noise
and colour.
A wedding procession at 6:30 AM.
Two taxi drivers and a contentious
dispute.
And down the road
someone is practicing hulusi scales,
over and over again.
Music that is hard to grow to.
But from the clear morning sky,
and an unwrapped Sunday morning.
It is amusing to see how life,
past imperfect, spills out
and no longer screams of fear.
A Change of Habit
Angus Young (www,acdc.com)
A woman told me today that
I needed a girlfriend,
a Chinese girlfriend and that
she knew someone.
I ask her why?
“Some women like poets
and I think you are lonely”
I told her Bukowski said that
‘Love is a dog from hell’
“What has love got to do with it”
She said.
But then she told me she was not
sure about her friend.
I asked her why?
“Well, I don’t think she will like
AC/DC, and maybe she can’t
understand you”
So I asked her to tell her friend,
not to worry about how
we the fashion the future.
Or how many people come
together by slow degrees.
A Place of Solitude
It’s been fifty five years since this car dropped off Thích Quảng Đức in downtown Saigon, and now it’s sitting right along the Perfume River at the Thien Mu pagoda in Hue ( second picture, I took)
I took a boat trip to Thien Mu
in the ward of Hương Long in Huế,
to see a celestial lady.
The boat was run by a mother
and daughter, who offered me tea
and smiles that wanted us all.
Inside it was quite,
just the engine of the boat,
wet and gutted.
Another failed lung,
a small sound that was all sounds.
Always pleading with the perfumed
river and smiling seductively, the
daughter tried to sell me things.
T-shirts, postcards of old Vietnam
and oversized conical hats.
So I bought a t-shirt
with ‘Hue’ on the front.
Even though I knew it was too small,
it seemed the right thing to do.
There was no imitation of life,
just three people in a moment.
Awake to the filtered sunshine,
that occupies most of our days.
A Short Walk
My Picture: Taken Yesterday.
A Wandering Poet 