My Picture: Mekong River, Vietnam
Forests of the Imagination
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Night Time Friends
My Picture: Taiyuan City., Shanxi Province, China
There was a time when it ended
that I drank all the time.
I would drink with Jim, the policeman
until one in the morning.
He would tell me how most women
did not understand him.
And how his latest girlfriend
satisfied him, most of the time.
He felt sure this was the right one.
But he had said this before.
I would drink with my neighbour,
she was older than me and always
answered in the negative.
Listening to her was painful, the more
she talked, the more I needed a drink.
As each evening tailed off into the night,
I would see the embittered face of my father.
And an early morning smile from you.
That told me I was waking up and no
harm would come to me.
I’ll never forget the smile as long as I live.
So I made up my mind to quit my drinking,
and write about unsavory details and delighted
moments, in all its forms of existence.
Lost Soul
Trying to find Charles Bukowski,
in some places is not easy.
It is easy to find Keats and Tagore.
They come running at you,
like a bright and dusty sun.
As subtle as love making on a drunken
Saturday night.
Yesterday a friend asked me
“Why would you wanna read Bukowski anyway, he
just writes about sex and drinking?”
“What else is there to write about?” I said
He paused…
“The jagged mind and shattered dreams…and all that”
So I thought about this for a minute and told him
“Nobody writes about this anymore, it doesn’t sell”
Nights of Espionage
My Picture: Taiyuan City, Shanxi Province, China.
To die the way I live,
amongst the intersection of
ideas and words.
To show contempt for
the enduring loneliness
of a wandering exile.
A living spirit, turned
into a child again.
That is how I want it to be.
Days Like This
My Picture: New Membership Card
A new gym opening in Xinxiang,
and an unwanted fear of growing old alone.
I went to look, as the autumn leaves fell
and spoke of drearier days.
I met a beautiful lady, who reminded me of you.
On dull October days like these, a glistening
sweet kernel illuminating the air.
And a slow fermentation of patched-up memories.
So I joined the gym, and turned to the trees
no longer waiting for the skies to crack.
And the beautiful lady….well we said ‘hello’
and exchanged WeChat addresses.
Days into nights
My Picture: Sunset in the Gobi Desert. Dunhuang, China.
I live alone in a nice apartment
and read the news every day.
Most days I write poetry
and listen to music.
Rainbow dreams
and triviality are always present.
But I sleep alone in the dark,
a shady sadness.
And dream of you,
shining through the ages.
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….”
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.
Awakening Solitude
My Picture: Jin River, Chengdu, China
A Wandering Poet 