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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.
The Age of Reason
My Picture: 798 Art Zone: Beijing, China.
Now, for all that is the
curtain of my soul.
It is hard to remember those
bright days of early love.
And a picture of you and me
in strange surroundings, is all
that is left of days restored.
My share at least, the beauty
of desire and a loss stolen away.
Distant children, a house that is no more
and a world turned loose from
dense dreams past.
A concept of love,
a plaster fix of selfish cries.
Was a least a reason for sinking in
the sand and losing it.
Too many indulgent days,
self-aware, yet unable to care
and blinded by coal-burning
tears.
Now, in silence my wounds I feel.
From those times, so fondly
cherished.
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 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)
A Wandering Poet 