Thoughts in a silent cafe

My Pictures: Taken today.

Sometimes it is difficult to straighten
my saddened thoughts.
I make my bed, drink some coffee
and catch up on the world.
But it is not always enough.

I muddle through the day
swimming upwards, backwards
and from time-to time
finding moments to write
and see things differently.

On occasions I read Bukowski,
then I realize that things could be worse.
So I read Dickinson,
to find a tangible mind and spirit.

In the end, my thinking
always seems to end up in another room.
A landscape of the spirit,
blue sky and thinking open mind.

Unseen Songs

My Pictures

Wandering in a bookshop in Xinxiang,
I came across an Underwood 310 typewriter,
an Olivetti by another name.
It was not in good shape….
probably taken too many victims.

A young woman gave me a book about
the sex life of Andy Warhol.

‘You might find this interesting”

I thought this was a strange combination
of histories mingling….

In a moment of lighthouse flashes,
I felt a warm familiar breeze….
a self-moment of age.
There and then
I wanted to love someone.
Until death comes to visit me again,
the wind that brought me here still goes on.

Xiao Nian

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http://www.cctv.com:  The 23rd day of the year’s last lunar month marks a traditional Chinese holiday called Xiao Nian, which means Preliminary Eve, the prelude to the Lunar New Year’s Eve celebration.

Another year without summer,
the cold sun fills the heavens and the earth.
Darkness on the edge of the city,
a hard moon sick and rising.
One suffers love, so meager

The Jade Emperor shows me a way forward.
A vision in light white silk, beyond the empty void
burning me up with hope……
my mind is awake……
No way now to hide the fire inside.

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.

Branches of memory

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My Picture: ‘Giant Buddha’. Taiyuan, Shanxi Province, China.

Between the sun in dull reflection
and the grieving branches.
I may move between familiar memories,
and starless still nights cold clean and unclaimed.

Moments linger touched by what was.
A faint visible haze of seamless living life,
that reaches out to me now.
For simply breath without pain.

To the tune of life

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My picture: Poster on the wall of No 3 Hospital, Xinxiang, China.

How long is lifelong?
Years of tender colours,
taken away in a moment.

Once a life was so flat,
so bitter and cold.
But love and lust
never eluded me.

A year’s gone…
but moments are offered
up in song.
Dredged each day
from toil in the fine dust.

Yet… there are times
away from the crowd, when
the flowers fall fast in the hard rain.
Then I think of you.

To remain inside

My Picture: I had acupuncture on my left shoulder today…to many years playing rugby…the Doctor said…….

I used to hide
around the shadows of the night.
Pain like a rose thorn…..
beautiful yet
prick sticks the tender…..
a constant companion.
Ice cold tears,
silent and tempted by voyages.

Then the sun came forth,
a work of art and words without sight
flowed and gave me a ride to a dreamscape.
Faith beauty floated above a Chinese sky.

Poems in high clouds and vintage bones,
there was nothing that I could not see
that was not a flower.
Pure like a sweet child’s heart
……I would sooner have the sun

And as for the poets

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My Picture” My Apartment door.

As the moon rises

I see steel hardened and standing,

silent as a water-worn stone.

Like a ghost from the past,

haunting present and future.

It visits me form time-to-time,

leaving behind legacy systems

and memory by memory of the mind.

Dark Waters

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My Picture

After Christmas…
too many unsold trees
and damp mornings.
The river goes over and over
the curve of the winter hills.

A fallen oak branch
becomes an AK47
in the hands of the child.
As he watches his mother and father,
argue both sides of the story.
A pale replica of summer days in Jinghua Park.

Looking up,
I can see the rules of punctuation,
with temporary wings.
A contraction of darkness
unfolding the dust of others winters,
one limb at a time.