My Pictures: Xiahe: Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Gansu Province, China .
Xiahe
Life
6am in Xinxiang
My Picture: View from my apartment window. Xinxiang City: Henan Province, China.
It is 6am in Xinxiang.
No one home, nothing filling up.
A dog howls, in a thick hoarse voice.
That breaks the silent part.
The moon still up this morning,
greets the eye as reflections blaze.
Unable to bear the past, a small
semblance of a lamp light future.
Only a street cleaner,
hardworking, lovesick and confused.
Occupies the space between common lines,
and the black gutters by the road.
I look through my window,
broken with slashes of hard metal.
A whirling cosmos of love, far away.
The only living thing in Xinxiang
The few stars left, able to
punctuate this blissful solitude.
Give time alone to heal,
to shape the earth to something else.
Sitting in a Taiyuan Street
My Picture: Taiyuan Street Market. Taiyuan City, Shanxi Province, China.
The best place to
see life in Taiyuan
is to sit on the street.
Just by Xue Fu Park
on Tiyu road.
The arteries of the
city grasping for
space and meaning.
Husbands too tired to talk.
Wives waiting for the next
episode.
Fireflies searching
for a neon light.
Lost, no hope.
Street cleaners who
read Hemingway,
a mind trick for the few.
Dancing ladies who
sing the songs
of the old brigade.
Streets sellers
sharing crops, and
the pain of emptiness.
Old men playing Xiangqi,
for those who dare
not lift their eyes.
Nurtured seeds
emerging to an
unforgiving noise.
Shadows throughout the day
taken up by mesmerizing myths.
The best place to
see life in Taiyuan
is to sit on the street.
Life in China
My Picture: Night Jogging. Taiyuan, Shanxi Province, China.
For the last three years I have lived and worked in China and without doubt it has been one of the most exhilarating and memorable experiences of my life…so far.
Trying to characterize any country in not easy. Trying to characterize a country like China…with its vast history, cultural, literary and linguistic traditions poses challenges for me.
As I have traveled around this wonderful country and met so many kind and curious people, I have written many poems. Some of which I will share with you.
Dawn in Ho Chi Minh City
My Picture: Dawn – Mekong River: Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.
The dawn will come soon enough.
The cockerel has been
telling me this for some time.
Singing a half-waking,
shining path to the light.
The early morning,
empty of the sun stands alone.
So thin and full of lucid air.
Glow and sigh, and slowly die.
A single moth with filmy wings
flies past my window.
Bold and decadent.
Dancing, darting to distant drums.
An Asian moon floods
its fading beauty to the sky.
The light unveils all.
The Old
My Picture: Mrs Noc. Hoi An, Vietnam
Some talk out.
But most are silent.
A world of grace,
yet quite submission.
But I am relevant,
with no lines to be silent.
Or tint of hopelessness.
Instinct, memory
and a taste for words.
Still recollect a way.
Each day my hair is grey.
But after a hundred years,
motionless as peace.
Nature will tell a tale
of these words
and precarious times.
Surfeits of sadness
and labyrinths of
day’s sweet darkness.
All groaning and languid.
And lost in seas of plastic
and fake poets.
Then, the old left bent
and close to the earth.
Will talk of glory to decay
And give voice
to words and deeds
and distance in-between.
Dating in Vietnam
My Picture: Street Art: Ho Chi Minh City. Vietnam
Some are not interested in the forests,
or how many Asians died.
Nam Viet is a restaurant, open
from 8am-11pm each day.
And summertime in Hue means
cheap booze and handmade suits.
In Da Nang the girls in golden tight dresses,
who can hardly walk in their six inch heels.
Sell cheap cigarettes from table to table.
Always with a smile and a look at their breasts.
And wanting a dearest friend to be at their side.
On trips to Hanoi and Hoi An,
the code to Vietnam’s literary treasure.
I met some tourists, sinking to be happy.
And calling to nothing, and the fall of the future.
They asked thin questions with no light
“What about the Women Andrew”
“What about the nightlife and the girls”
“Do you think they’re sexy?”
“How expensive are they?”
A friend in Ho Chi Minh City asked me
“Why do people think like this?”
“I guess it is easy, if ugly is all you know”, I said
A trip on the Mekong
My Picture: The Mekong River, Vietnam.
The Mekong River, an evergreen
coconut land.
A tasteful me of Vietnam.
Sleepy river towns pass by.
Uprooted trees, uprooted country
swept downstream by hopes
of a better life.
Bamboo fish traps rest on the bank.
Naked children play in the muddy water.
Wet hair and wooden paddles in their hands,
chasing the fish that escape.
The hired longboat pilot smoked
his last cigarette, and pointed
to the rooftops of the buildings.
Each dotted with red satellite dishes,
sitting side by side with the dark spiders
and crocodile lizards.
My Picture: The Mekong
The slender wooden beams of the stilt houses,
that fill the dreams of the poor and the
tourists pass by.
Skinny and dark as mosquitoes that turn
the southern sky green.
A county built on stilt legs
and fireflies that come and go.
And a river once full of sadness
and companions lost in love.
Now cries a different life.
A life of flesh and security of bone.
Of a Dollar and a soul adjourned
for a future time.
And “Vietnam” is their only reply.
Hanoi Tales
Women of Vietnam
What is life for you?
One bitterness
One sadness
and one of joy.
Full of breath
and hope kissed.
Each day your burn
to give us light.
To give to me.
Your tears as heavy
as the human body.
And hastily washed away.
The Streets of Hanoi
I am sleepy now.
Too many hours walking
the streets of Hanoi.
Dull reflections on
Hoan Kiem Lake.
I would rather a life of poetry.
Than bashing about these
timid days without a breeze.
And little comfort in passing.
First Morning in Hanoi
My Picture: First Morning: Outside My Hotel, Hanoi, Vietnam.
A Wandering Poet 