My Picture: Xiahe, Gannan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Gansu , China.
Romantic Interlude
China
The thoughts that poets have
My Picture: Taiyuan, Shanxi Province, China.
It seems at times I can’t be older.
A white haired smile
and a fossil imprint,
infused with a hunters despair.
Exotic summers still remain,
and winter days without
a breeze are wildly wept on.
I still remember how the stillness dazed.
As night pushes into day,
I taste the fragrance of your flesh.
A flower soaked in persistent rain,
a tiny track in fallen snow.
Each step, and again is silent.
The tragedy of dreams
My Picture: Xinxiang, Henan Province, China.
Like most others
I have come through
sadness and
loves deep nights.
And let them have their moments.
Now I see through
the wasted landscape,
and broadcasts
that say nothing.
Lamenting only a
laugh and an echo passing by.
A grey cry of the future,
is enough to make things grow.
And suffer the castigation
of my thinning dreams,
now so quickly dispatched.
Putting in the Work
‘My Cafe’: Xinxiang, China.
We sat drinking coffee,
both making our way home.
He told me about a lost faith,
and working 17 hours a day.
No proof of skill or
dreams that keep time.
Only a red-eyed wake
each morning.
I thought some jobs you like.
Others are so dreary and pitiless,
they make you want to stay in bed.
And think about the
waitress you met last night.
And if God has a name.
Street Shadows
My Picture: Frozen River Fen, Taiyuan, Shanxi province , China.
Shadows cast by
neon lights, ripped plainly
from the future.
A world now
only of memory,
and frozen snapshots
of unclaimed territory.
Each moment experienced
more violently,
with every sleep
secured.
Some people
are never wrong,
and others yearn for love.
Idle comments are
left hanging,
on an empty white space.
I find myself watching
endlessly, searchingly
for whimsical lines
and a poet with all the answers.
But in the end, it is left to me
to tell it as it was.
Walking under the moon
My Picture: The moon tonight: Xinxiang, China
Long walks at night—
I asked the moon to talk to me,
just the two of us.
But the moon would not talk,
it slept within.
So we both never said a word.
I hope one day soon
we can meet again.
With a desire, and a yearning.
Moving towards the night
My Picture: Early evening, Taiyuan City, Shanxi Province, China.
Late in the evening,
a cold day of silence in the city.
The lights of Number 3 hospital,
recovered from memory
days and nights on the wards.
Dances full of questions,
and a tall thin woman
swept through my bones.
I listened to the radio,
and voices from faraway.
A conversation about the
meaning of life I think.
Unpainted and twisted,
the voices boiled into a
gloom and silence.
Composed of new forms
of unrelated shapes.
Dancing Ladies of Xinxiang
My Picture: Near my apartment: Xinxiang, China.
Half eaten by the moon
and wrapped in cold sheets of rain.
Their eyeballs roll and hips sway,
and the dancing begins.
Always at the same time,
and without a blessing or leaf falling.
Music supersedes their days
on the long march, bellowing
to us all across a great distance.
A ritual that a poet can understand.
An existence that become endless,
and the power of preserving.
City Lights
My Picture: Xinxiang City, Henan Province, China.
When I first came to the city,
I was so much smaller.
The city was busy with
stories, hidden away and unsung.
Fog played at my feet,
and cold mists of rain
chorused a life
of tragedy and contentment.
Among the soundless solitudes,
I found a crowded room full of poetry
and thoughts of hope.
Song of the City
My Picture: Taken tonight: Xinxiang City, China.
A Wandering Poet 