My Pictures:  Xiahe: Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Gansu Province, China .

Today I went to the top of the world
and met three monks.
Empty of everything except themselves.
The sky a seamless part of it.
With pleasant walks, food and talk at will.
Our only dreams of words forgotten.

And there in the margins,
an interval between wars I saw a black bird.
As black as those that bled in a Shanxi mine.
Darkness evolved into perfection.
Mountains within mountains,
something like a maze.
And now, in my returning dream,
I see tides of people falling through the siege.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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