My Picture: Some friends I met in Xiahe in Gannan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Gansu, China.
Birds and Flight
Creative Writing
Journey to Work
My Picture: ‘Roasting Nuts: Taiyuan, Shanxi Province, China.
Neil Young
was singing about saving the world,
and how to burn love.
The trees looked bare,
behind life looked unpainted.
Xinyun bus, number 25
passed by…..
windows blacked out.
The air hung lowly…..
we need to call the cops…..it will never stop.
Another ‘jam’ but no music,
just people walking away.
So…I got out….
and danced like a giant down the road.
Swift for them I disappeared…..
and then they stopped, as lonely as a poet.
It’s only 7:30 am…..and the cops are late……
How did it come to this?
Ageless
A Picture of a picture by a local artist here in Xinxiang.
Have you seen this place,
the sky, the sounds and the agony……
red cross blazing high and wide.
A ruby sun, unrequited
and slashed by snaking tree-lines.
Walking warily, in half-light moving…..
we talked of horseback
and watching processions.
While others watch the burning forest deep,
and hover in ageless light.
Girls shyly huddled behind each other,
waiting for a snarling lead…..
and the boys…?
…….lumber high and low.
Searching for the perfect black, oily haired girl.
A flitting shape to gape the sky and blink the stars.
Spring in cold sunlight
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My Pictures: Medical Humanities Class…..a characterization of pain…
Time crawls, face droops
the shadow of a lone tree
silently waiting……
Ponderous framework
and over-designed systems
burrow deeper in.
I am ready to go anywhere,
to touch the trees and spiked beaked flowers
dancing in the breeze.
And see the black bumblebees
mesmerizing their audience,
to become warm once again….
A mothering blackness
My Picture: Mahjong in Taiyuan.
Five in the morning,
drinking till the sun comes up.
Unable to slow down,
a single raindrop holding on for life….
I remember a dazed starling,
blue wings and orange breasts.
An iridescent creature,
beating a course to an open space.
A red-haired pterippus,
untouched, unclaimed territory.
Now, there is blue and grey……
no one really won.
A festive devotion paid per use,
chances to hang around some familiar things.
Forbidding Flight
My Picture: Pictures on my office wall.
Music in the wind,
talk of spring now.
To remember some smiling years past
willing its way to the top.
Last night,
cactus pain all over.
One star stung a sad song….
What else can I say
in this dead of night.
A rose fades
My Picture
A bunch of roses clutched
in your warm hands.
Gives him a place……what a team
of rare plant flowers
and alternate passions.
But plague and rude voices
dimmed the light,
of its splendor and summer winds.
Now the sounds must seem like echoes,
and shouts of shaming silence.
Dark place
My Picture and drawing.
Facing west, a dark forest.
One tree island
vanquished by the sun.
Each day the hounds
pursuit their breathless prey.
The she dog grown thin
from honey sick love.
Against a smooth dark sky
nothing to have at heart,
half an existence.
And there I see…..
estranged to myself
the lateness of the world……
and only the beauty to be.
Sunday morning
A picture sent to me my one of my students
Complacencies of the night,
tears of an ancient sacrifice.
I dreamt a little,
a small spill
of things to be cherished
like the thought of a heaven.
Eubank wins on points,
England loose to Wales,
passions of rain and a fading empire.
Bob Seger sings of a ‘fire inside’,
emotions on wet roads on winter mornings.
Looking through open widows,
smiling through memories.
Xinxiang distracted by the self,
a soft breeze blows in
The way you are always near
and coffee already cold,
the joy of this Sunday morning.
A New Term
My Picture
A Wandering Poet 