My Picture: Wall Painting: Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
Love Confronted
Life
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.
Imitation of Life
My Picture: Taiyuan City, Shanxi Province, China.
A bird sat
on my windowsill.
Each movement
and habit
carefully planned
and uncontested.
A poetic truth
I thought.
I was moved
to see such
outstanding
imitations of life
on this
cold morning.
Their Day
My Picture: Quoc Hoc High School, Hue, Vietnam.
It’s been a long day.
Everybody wanted something from me.
Tracy wanted me to practice for
the line-dancing competition.
I said I couldn’t dance.
In the end I practiced the electric Slide,
cupid Shuffle and the Cha, Cha, Cha.
And felt like a dancing queen.
Josephine wanted me to talk to her
students on how to improve their English,
and good habits.
She gave me that look….it always gets me.
So I say ok.
Then Dave called me,
not in self-pity and something forgotten,
which is normal for him.
More, “I have an idea….”
It never strikes, but makes me despair at
the language and the scrutiny.
Now I feel like the only living boy in this place
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.
The water glistens
and the moon hangs low.
Scooters and cars float by.
The people yearn for the clouds,
and the clouds
pine for the water.
All have forgotten to mourn
and yet they meet.
Weaving their dreams
and living on the road,
one and the same.
Wakeful Things
My Picture
It began with a slight
pain in her side,
nothing new really.
She was witty,
knowledgeable and golden,
and she loved me.
Then it came,
somber the night was.
Dragging those
beautiful thighs,
from love and sleep.
To a hospital bed
and the dangerous tides of
palliative chemotherapy.
And death dropped from
the dark,
a ghost standing on a bridge.
And everybody hurts.
Cold Mornings
My Picture: Frozen River Wei, Xinxiang, China
A Wandering Poet 