The River Wei,
Autumn solitude
and a thousand eyes.
A moth-rich summer darkness
that warns the soul.

The slow fat queens,
cold-blooded, green and orange.
Spin and turn gasping for breath.
The last of their sins surrendered.

Flashlights and flasks,
a meditation on a fragile soul.
Chasing the silver fins,
the struggle and the toil.
Forty years of night fishing.

Wei River Winter 2018, Xinxiang, Henan Province, China

The sun dimly white and thin
hangs over the Xinxiang rooftops.
Frozen thoughts swim
to the dry banks of the Wei River.
Locked and clattered in the same broken run.

Why did you stay, but not forever?
A constant companion sang the cat.
A perfect octave in a moment of intervals,
between margins of half-heard music
and the last light of unclear whispers.

Now the days and nights are wounded.
A hallmark of all the hidden places.
Like a sleepless boy who hates his bed,
something of this slow fading is impossible to forget.

From my window,
I can see clouds breaking the morning.
Turning to see your shy-flushed face,
that carries the shreds of a dream
that I can’t remember.
Delicate spaces between us
separate me from the world.

Xiahe :Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Gansu province, the People’s Republic of China

In came to me in red rainbow dreams
and Rochdale girls that buy beauty.
A picture of Che and the
East Sea winds of Qiu Jin.
A spirit and passion born.

Some said this was a wasted landscape.
My history teacher, too weak to carry on
and full of thinning dreams.
Told me “Just partake with others”

Now, cold in the delicate snow
the poets are silent.
Dying and dying with no reason to make things grow.
Bruised and bloody and beating a course
of sound and sense.
A few frozen snapshots and secret codes.

The idle and the lazy all dazzling with moonlight.
Left hanging and ashamed of saying nothing.
And the Rochdale girls, no longer productive.
Look for the dead poets
And the Beat’s flowering of days gone by.

ERiver Fen, Taiyuan City. Shanxi Province, Chinanter a caption

Once by the banks of the River Fen,
nothing fell out of place.
You told me that you did not like AC/DC,
but we agreed it was hard in this city for
two guitars, bass and drums to see the point.

The sun was out and we could see forever,
a gentle breeze played with falling leaves.
Creating landscapes of spilled remnants.
But you told me not to worry, they are just leaves.

We looked at the counterfeit buildings
and counterfeit trees, and wondered
about sound and silence.
And if human memories always find empty spaces,
in places where people no longer hear the buildings sing.

Now, a portrait of a moment, singular and more