My Picture: Xiahe Town, Gansu Province, China.
Poetry of indifference
Medical Humanities
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.
Falling through branches
My Picture
Across the frozen field,
a horse breath.
I hear a chime of bells…
a table for one.
Paper flowers,
the old songs
and words we can’t recall.
The poet is out of rhythm.
Hospital waiting rooms,
and jazz in the park.
A mother’s cowlick
squawks the moment.
Walking sticks are left
dropped into a hole.
Foreigners are talking
to a young dog, barking.
A tired flagpole slumbers,
reflecting the new world order.
Bars with under-age concubines
proclaim business as usual.
Growing quiet and suddenly still,
I can see the rice fields glow.
Shyly spreading wispy memories,
with broken and dark stained teeth.
Birds and Flight
My Picture: Some friends I met in Xiahe in Gannan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Gansu, China.
A deep black satin of the night…
happy hour……
nourishes these broken crowns
…..and words outside their usual habitations.
The only know language
a whipped-up, fading cobalt sky
….and traces of thought
as thin as pins.
And as the girl settles her garments,
a spider with a hidden sting…..
spark fast the blackness of the night.
Like the days before rock and roll
…..and syncopates of love.
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 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.
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.
Pain of yesterday, today and tomorrow.
My Pictures: Some thoughts from my students from a class on ‘Psychopathology’
United in pain.
A midlife sadness,
louder than a scream.
Take me away from this winter,
and voices cancelled by the rain.
When stillness descended,
the night…..ours to decide.
And what I loved
was the idleness of a moment with you.
Gathering words and stolen kisses
under candle – light.
Darkness hides the sunset
My Pictures: Unit 731 was a covert biological and chemical warfare research and development unit of the Imperial Japanese Army that undertook lethal human experimentation during the Second Sino-Japanese War of World War II. It was responsible for some of the most notorious war crimes carried out by Imperial Japan. I visited this museum today, just outside Harbin…it was harrowing….some of the pictures I took…are difficult to post here. The railway brought the people for experimentation, torture and death. Most of the ‘crimes’ were carried out by Japanese medical personal against the Chinese people. I wrote this poem shortly after I left the site:
Trees and sky darkened this morning.
Frost hardened tears,
a snake to the railway track.
I heard the pain, shout for a cure.
The doctors gave no refuge, no rest.
Thorns and needle pricks,
a bee pointed stinger.
Bare feet walking on ash covered ground,
fresh on the day.
Now, who tells this tale….
of snow cones in the dark
and souls left hanging from the ceiling.
Between the barbed wire and trees still bent…
all that is left of this dark protrusion
….. is rain filled graves and half-light streets.
To tell us how it was.
Even the darkness has hope
My Pictures: More treatment today on my shoulder …..
The sorrow pain agony,
still continues.
It is never satisfied.
Coughing here and there
on the Xinxiang streets.
Yet I can still see,
the sun streaks that kissed your hair.
And the daily love dance,
broken, but now stronger.
Reborn with death together,
where hope had seemed left behind.
Now each drop of ink,
preserves a love lost in time.
A Wandering Poet 