My Picture: Night Jogging. Taiyuan, Shanxi Province, China.
Life in China
Uncategorised
Dawn in Ho Chi Minh City
My Picture: Dawn – Mekong River: Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.
The dawn will come soon enough.
The cockerel has been
telling me this for some time.
Singing a half-waking,
shining path to the light.
The early morning,
empty of the sun stands alone.
So thin and full of lucid air.
Glow and sigh, and slowly die.
A single moth with filmy wings
flies past my window.
Bold and decadent.
Dancing, darting to distant drums.
An Asian moon floods
its fading beauty to the sky.
The light unveils all.
The Old
My Picture: Mrs Noc. Hoi An, Vietnam
Some talk out.
But most are silent.
A world of grace,
yet quite submission.
But I am relevant,
with no lines to be silent.
Or tint of hopelessness.
Instinct, memory
and a taste for words.
Still recollect a way.
Each day my hair is grey.
But after a hundred years,
motionless as peace.
Nature will tell a tale
of these words
and precarious times.
Surfeits of sadness
and labyrinths of
day’s sweet darkness.
All groaning and languid.
And lost in seas of plastic
and fake poets.
Then, the old left bent
and close to the earth.
Will talk of glory to decay
And give voice
to words and deeds
and distance in-between.
Dating in Vietnam
My Picture: Street Art: Ho Chi Minh City. Vietnam
Some are not interested in the forests,
or how many Asians died.
Nam Viet is a restaurant, open
from 8am-11pm each day.
And summertime in Hue means
cheap booze and handmade suits.
In Da Nang the girls in golden tight dresses,
who can hardly walk in their six inch heels.
Sell cheap cigarettes from table to table.
Always with a smile and a look at their breasts.
And wanting a dearest friend to be at their side.
On trips to Hanoi and Hoi An,
the code to Vietnam’s literary treasure.
I met some tourists, sinking to be happy.
And calling to nothing, and the fall of the future.
They asked thin questions with no light
“What about the Women Andrew”
“What about the nightlife and the girls”
“Do you think they’re sexy?”
“How expensive are they?”
A friend in Ho Chi Minh City asked me
“Why do people think like this?”
“I guess it is easy, if ugly is all you know”, I said
The Beauty of War
My Picture. Hue War Museum, Vietnam.
Last night, I walked by the relics.
The last of the violent beasts.
Small and damaged now.
Filled with anxious, mounting fear.
The last know speakers
of a dead language.
Now exquisite neon figurines,
talk slithering sounds,
and horses sleep alone.
The raucous rivers lament
the frivolous tunes
and silent broadcasts
of those dark times.
And the poets, who thought
that success followed desire.
Write to complain about the
loss of poetic form.
And the death of odes to love.
A trip on the Mekong
My Picture: The Mekong River, Vietnam.
The Mekong River, an evergreen
coconut land.
A tasteful me of Vietnam.
Sleepy river towns pass by.
Uprooted trees, uprooted country
swept downstream by hopes
of a better life.
Bamboo fish traps rest on the bank.
Naked children play in the muddy water.
Wet hair and wooden paddles in their hands,
chasing the fish that escape.
The hired longboat pilot smoked
his last cigarette, and pointed
to the rooftops of the buildings.
Each dotted with red satellite dishes,
sitting side by side with the dark spiders
and crocodile lizards.
My Picture: The Mekong
The slender wooden beams of the stilt houses,
that fill the dreams of the poor and the
tourists pass by.
Skinny and dark as mosquitoes that turn
the southern sky green.
A county built on stilt legs
and fireflies that come and go.
And a river once full of sadness
and companions lost in love.
Now cries a different life.
A life of flesh and security of bone.
Of a Dollar and a soul adjourned
for a future time.
And “Vietnam” is their only reply.
Hanoi Tales
Women of Vietnam
What is life for you?
One bitterness
One sadness
and one of joy.
Full of breath
and hope kissed.
Each day your burn
to give us light.
To give to me.
Your tears as heavy
as the human body.
And hastily washed away.
The Streets of Hanoi
I am sleepy now.
Too many hours walking
the streets of Hanoi.
Dull reflections on
Hoan Kiem Lake.
I would rather a life of poetry.
Than bashing about these
timid days without a breeze.
And little comfort in passing.
First Morning in Hanoi
My Picture: First Morning: Outside My Hotel, Hanoi, Vietnam.
Motorbikes and scooters
rough miles in the city,
a grinning vice of ever sound.
Women bearing baskets
of strange coloured fruits.
And war heroes carrying
bundles of fake t-shirts
to market.
Slip-slap, slip-slap
the sound of the sandaled
street walkers.
Holding their babies
and selling cheap fans,
made in China.
Young girls crushed with eyeliner,
smile as I pass.
And stray cats strut their tails
in acts of defiance.
A lone saxophonist plays
in a back ally
“I think is Coltrane”
Said the tourist
and smiled anyway.
So I listened to the solo,
invading the city.
Life is on the street in Hanoi.
Vietnam
My Picture: Hoi An: Vietnam
I recently took a ‘road trip’ in Vietnam. I started in Hanoi in the North and after a month of traveling arrived in Ho Chi Minh City in the South.
To fall ‘in-love’ with Vietnam and the Vietnamese people…..was easy for me. With its dramatic landscapes, fascinating history, epic food, pulsating energy and kind and helpful people…it is a country that created many indelible memories for me.
So as I traveled I was able to write some poems…poems about moments, people, places and about just ‘being’ in a culture, a country, a place that I had never experienced before. The next few poems I post will reflect this journey for me.
I hope you enjoy some of them.
Remnants
A picture I took: River Fen: Taiyuan City, Shanxi Province. China.
On this early morning
the clouds are listless
and foreign shone.
The street cleaners,
bent to the wind
sweep away the
faded remnants from
jubilant patriotic days.
An old man is placed outside,
a thousand days before.
Still left with lonely regret.
He learnt the secrets
of distance long ago.
The radio switched
to a distant broadcast.
Plays the lopped faded voices
from mountain retreats,
that talk of days of flags
and queens.
And Autumn traps
the fading light.
A wakened echo that once
held a mighty rage.
A Wandering Poet 