My picture: A grey day in Xinxiang
Pain Diagnosed
Age
Xiao Nian
http://www.cctv.com: The 23rd day of the year’s last lunar month marks a traditional Chinese holiday called Xiao Nian, which means Preliminary Eve, the prelude to the Lunar New Year’s Eve celebration.
Another year without summer,
the cold sun fills the heavens and the earth.
Darkness on the edge of the city,
a hard moon sick and rising.
One suffers love, so meager
The Jade Emperor shows me a way forward.
A vision in light white silk, beyond the empty void
burning me up with hope……
my mind is awake……
No way now to hide the fire inside.
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.
‘Tuku’ died today
http://www.citizen .co.za
Oliver Mtukudzi died today.
My friend said
“So what….many singers die, it’s inevitable”
But I have a lingering mind…
Long before the shadows came,
and love was stolen from us.
We would listen to his music
and rainbows stood in a moment.
Oliver Mtukudzi died today…..
To the tune of life
My picture: Poster on the wall of No 3 Hospital, Xinxiang, China.
How long is lifelong?
Years of tender colours,
taken away in a moment.
Once a life was so flat,
so bitter and cold.
But love and lust
never eluded me.
A year’s gone…
but moments are offered
up in song.
Dredged each day
from toil in the fine dust.
Yet… there are times
away from the crowd, when
the flowers fall fast in the hard rain.
Then I think of you.
To remain inside
My Picture: I had acupuncture on my left shoulder today…to many years playing rugby…the Doctor said…….
I used to hide
around the shadows of the night.
Pain like a rose thorn…..
beautiful yet
prick sticks the tender…..
a constant companion.
Ice cold tears,
silent and tempted by voyages.
Then the sun came forth,
a work of art and words without sight
flowed and gave me a ride to a dreamscape.
Faith beauty floated above a Chinese sky.
Poems in high clouds and vintage bones,
there was nothing that I could not see
that was not a flower.
Pure like a sweet child’s heart
……I would sooner have the sun
Dark Waters
My Picture
After Christmas…
too many unsold trees
and damp mornings.
The river goes over and over
the curve of the winter hills.
A fallen oak branch
becomes an AK47
in the hands of the child.
As he watches his mother and father,
argue both sides of the story.
A pale replica of summer days in Jinghua Park.
Looking up,
I can see the rules of punctuation,
with temporary wings.
A contraction of darkness
unfolding the dust of others winters,
one limb at a time.
February 4th, 1989.
My Picture
A Wandering Poet 