A picture sent to me by a friend yesterday.
How to spend a Sunday
Education
China dream
My Picture
A dog watches me,
across a busy road
across our age and
difference.
Tree-by-tree,
the winter fog fades.
By song alone,
a spot of sunlight.
When I hear it,
I’m older now.
The wind that brought me
here, goes on.
Surrounding my bones.
Failing winter
My Picture: Xinxiang City, Henan Province, China.
A few clods of snow
and life will be forgotten.
A small farce with a song,
downcast and weary.
The only hope…..
spring sun and daffodils in windows.
A lucky fortune wrapped in fish paper,
and then a rock… turned underfoot.
Oven- burnt trees, will move and roll
with joys of life…
and make us love someone
this way and that….
While each poem emerges
from despair, a new first line.
Interrogative Blues
rptnb
My Pictures
Steve Reich in class today,
blowing in 18 musicians.
Discordant……
harsh and jarring…..
a lost harmony.
But I could see,
a blues haiku
entwined in my mind……
switch them awake.
Structure without structure…..
a Bukowski moment,
how to teach writing
to lit up heads…….
Slow bloom inside you
memories of failure,
turning….. glowing….. humming.
A lost phase……
and slow motion sound.
Too long this sense of obligation
and solitary existence.
But then again……a timid word
emerges from this despair.
A first line together…maybe.
Poetry of indifference
My Picture: Xiahe Town, Gansu Province, China.
Scolded by ignorance…..tirelessly at labour,
trying to bubble out a scarlet life.
Welled up unable to grasp your unsaid fears,
countless lives……. so costly bought.
I saw you struggle today, coffee and baby.
A cold deserted siheyuan…..
dark and desolate,
the west wind blowing old papers away.
And the black dogs of Fenyang
howled their dismay.
Each night resistance appears,
a haunting gape in mirrored lifeless eyes.
So, I go to the mountains
on the silent outskirts.
In this awkward configuration
it is difficult to tell……
who belongs to which nation…..this is enough.
Sunday Morning II
My Picture: River Fen, Taiyuan City, Shanxi Province, China.
Big wheel spinning round and round
a sketchy truth about the finer things.
Spring grasses echo a brave soldiers dream,
life forms in places our fingers and lips touch.
Memories firmly held….. grown up without symbols
fire burns the cracks….. passing time.
Fela Kuti flies the eagles, lonely as the poet
a few lines scratched….. by night.
Writing is weighing, a greater void left behind
‘Don’t be stingy with the whisky’…said Bukowski
Call it gray and call it tired, but also call it life.
It’s late, and few want to learn to dance.
In the morning, new mercies I see
as humble yellow hands reach out to me.
Spring in cold sunlight
hdrpl
hdrpl
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….
Songhua River
flashsgl
flashsgl
My Pictures: Taken today in Harbin, Heilongjiang, China – Walking on the frozen river.
My soul companions
dancing in the winter breeze.
Memories of a life frozen
deep below the Songhua River.
Each step a slow procession,
of love torn conversations.
In winter solitude
I make my home…
Words have magic
My Picture: The last treatment today.
Hiding the pain
I spent the afternoon
listening to John Coltrane,
‘The lost album’.
And as winter fights to stay,
with rooms dark and somber.
I started to figure it out.
Nature’s single breath,
and an eternal now.
Winter solstice
http://www.theepochtimes.com: Winter Solstice in China today.
When awake in the dark mornings,
a heart pounding and star frost outside.
I think of the sun, now turned away.
A vague mood momentarily out of shape
and living fast.
Each light stings and spins,
trying to rebalance the
the dark and light at the same time.
One continuous line dragging
each damp filled day from morning to dusk.
The hope…..
that light will return,
once more eager for sensation and meaning.
A pearl veil of day….with a laughing soul.
A Wandering Poet 