My Picture: Hue, Vietnam.
Neon Wonderland
Vietnam
A Poet’s Thoughts
My Picture: Bookshop: Hoi An, Vietnam
A late night,
or early morning
listening to Gill-Scott Heron
singing about prisons
and a sense of loss.
And the words keep coming.
I know about loss.
Each day I struggle with the
echoes of another world, imported
into dialogue.
A tired pen trying to catch an
errant voice passing by,
struggling to find the right words.
Now, suffering autumn’s castigation
lamenting in my awareness.
And Gill-Scott Heron, now he is
singing about no rain, no rain
and how to survive on sadness.
I get this…..
The strange death of poetry
My Picture: Bookworm Bookshop: Hanoi, Vietnam.
“Do you write about love like Neruda?”
“Do you understand the nature of immortality
like Dickinson?”
“Have you read Robert Frost and Wallace Stevens?
“They are American you know?”
“What do you think of Dylan Thomas?”
“Oh…..but he is Welsh”
“And what about Sylvia Plath and the confessional
movement?”
“She is a woman, but an American woman right”
“Of course we cannot not accept you,
unless you tell us about Whitman and the
American epic”.
“Oh yes… one more thing.
We don’t want any poems that
caustically indict bourgeois poetic values,
or celebrate the desperate……
like that Bukowski fellow”.
“OK?”
“Yes Sir….”
Especially Time
My Picture: Mỹ Sơn , Vietnam
I remember the loss,
streams of tears
mounted on elephants.
Pits of empty words.
No more roots to anchor me.
No one to lay with me.
Overseas and drifting forever.
But I’m not going to cry all the time.
Another Day
My Picture: Cafe, Ho An: Vietnam.
Sitting alone
in the café.
Just four other people,
two couples talking
to each other
without effort.
I remembered the day,
and all the people
telling me what they
want to know.
It was nice to
see a bit of them.
But they always want
a guru, a god or another
Steve Jobs.
Hard Moon
My Picture: Cover of a book of paintings by Lai Long and Bich Ngoc: Painters from Vietnam. I met them on a trip to Vietnam.
The hour is late
and I can’t sleep.
A hard moon,
consumed by ill-fate,
screws the night.
It came to me,
how it all slipped away.
A cold truth wooed and won.
Gravely, a tune of sorrow.
But I rather liked the
idea of being bad
And watching people
reproduce more of themselves.
The Harshness of Life
My Picture: Xinxiang Cafe, China
A coffee in my favourite cafe,
escaping the harshness of the
cautious loners.
The coffee was hot and clean
and the staff always say “hello”
in practiced English.
Tonight a woman told a man
they were finished.
She told him he could go to hell.
Someone once told me to go to hell.
It was just after we made love,
and the phone call from a strange woman.
I only met her once, when I was drunk
and probably said ‘I love you’
That was my mistake.
Yesterdays Sun
My Picture
Most days on my way to the café for coffee,
a homely comfort in a foreign place.
There is a man I see, a bleeding soul
in this vacant place.
He sleeps mainly on the grass verge,
always rough and unwashed.
Lays like an animal too ready for winter.
And the people pass him by.
The whole process shows desperation,
no such helpmates or a plight to bear.
A sickness of the mind, steeped in
ancient rules of deception.
Some see an empty space, some a sleeping dog.
And some an inconvenience from where they lie.
None of them see the whispers invading their
perceptions.
Yesterday the sun was setting, half asleep.
I remembered once feeling the
sun, and seeing half a yellow daffodil pale
blowing left and right.
Another heart broken race.
So I took some coffee and slice of
coconut cake to the man.
Undone with misery, he said something
I did not understand.
I thought, I am bitter sometimes
but the taste of life was one day sweet.
I was loved by goodness, and that was enough.
The Age of Reason
My Picture: 798 Art Zone: Beijing, China.
Now, for all that is the
curtain of my soul.
It is hard to remember those
bright days of early love.
And a picture of you and me
in strange surroundings, is all
that is left of days restored.
My share at least, the beauty
of desire and a loss stolen away.
Distant children, a house that is no more
and a world turned loose from
dense dreams past.
A concept of love,
a plaster fix of selfish cries.
Was a least a reason for sinking in
the sand and losing it.
Too many indulgent days,
self-aware, yet unable to care
and blinded by coal-burning
tears.
Now, in silence my wounds I feel.
From those times, so fondly
cherished.
Disco in China.
My copy.
A Wandering Poet 