Ten Poems |
by Changming Yuan |
|
The Calm Clam with a bow-wow mouth as big as my bald body both lips thin and hard carved in full eloquence with my tongue grown right out of my heart and soul i am surely meant to be a voice empowered for all around me either silt or sediments shining dull and dark with soiled secrets i often imagine myself like a free seagull singing at the top tip of a towering coral tree as myriads of grains of yellowish sand are panned or sifted out from the huge waves galloping ahead yet color-blind and tone-deaf i am deeply oppressed under the heavy water where sharks and squids keep yelling towards the sky above my blue musings as i withhold my tongue waiting for a sunny spell to translate my loud pain into a muted pearl Human Culture when i wake up and open my eyes i see all my dreams bounced back from the frames when i take a shower and start to sing i taste my song tart behind the blurring curtain when i strive to step out of my humble house i feel fences quarreling hard in the whole neighborhood when i visit around and do some blind sightseeing i smell blood stained along the castle foot finally i flee from this world and hide myself far away i still seem to hear the glaring cries from the great wall delicately hung is this earth a bluish cage in the universe Collage of Voices ...did you did you sight that last night a miraculous mirage of sounds without bounds: mishmash, hodgepodge- jingling, jangling tingling, tangling chitchat, ticktack clink clank, claptrap riprap, syrupchirrup hubblebubble, hocuspocus like a symphony of cacophony a cantata by the dead all woven into a fine line of the mind or a colored call did you hear that? Communion at a private spot of time in a public phone booth i try to make a long distant call to a strange friend or a friendly stranger not knowing his direct number i just keep putting all i have: my coins my limbs my senses and finally my naked soul yet each time i get connected i hear the same synthetic voice prompting me to leave a message on a vast voice mailbox which ( i doubt) has lost its designed functions War Zone my younger son has learned to snatch a sunny sunday afternoon and claim a corner of our wide tv screen as his territory for dragon fight before his big brother invades our cozy living room and changes it into a bloody battlefield for warcraft full of forced fragments my life gives me only edited sights of another super hero slaughtering an entire army of monstrous militants somewhere on the other side of the globe while my wife trying to read a romance beside the killing kettle in the kitchen finds herself totally lost in the reality supposedly virtual Buoys: 40 Maxims/Paradoxes/Redefinitions Forty years of age means no more bewilderment. Confucius 1. There is light in every dream we have in darkness. 2. Pleasant or painful, all experiences are as good as cash saved for a long rainy day. 3. The meaning of life, if any at all, is to create a meaning for life. 4. All human relationships are merely a matter of words: the situation is always determined by how, where, when and what words or nonwords are uttered by whom. 5. Money is as much a number-play to the rich as a death-dance to the poor. 6. A house for sale is never a home, while a heart unoccupied is a hotel for rent. 7. Freedom is the thin distance between the fleeing mouse and the chasing cat. 8. Love may be 99% honey and 1% money, while marriage is definitely otherwise. 9. True wealth is measured by the number of times you say no or take a shower. 10. Birth throws us out into different times whereas death recalls us back into the same place. 11. One most rewarding self-entertainment is masturbating with the idea of death. 12. Those who carve their love on their chestbones often fall in love with those who throw their love together with their used lipsticks or handkerchiefs. 13. This is not simply a grammatical game of changing the voice: every man loves a woman, but a woman is not loved by every man, and et cetera or vice versa. 14. Many still very much alive are stone dead; many already stone dead are still very much alive. 15. There are almost as many animals that have taken off their human clothes as humans that have put on their animal skins. 16. Comedy can come without romance or finance, but tragedy has to do with either or both. 17. Growth is painful because it means a series of deaths of our pasts, while death can be pleasant because it may result from a series of births of our presents. 18. Misfortune is a peculiar privilege. 19. In memories, roses always look fresher, while thorns less sharp. 20. What we see or read has always been so edited that the truth remains only in the mind of history unwritten. 21. You may have everything except disease or nothing except money. 22. Humans are different from animals in that they wear garments, build walls, tell tales and eat each other. 23. Remaining an outsider can give you a sense of superiority, transcendence and peacefulness. 24. Every life is a work of art; however, not every work of art is a life. 25. Only those determined to reform others can hope to be reformed. 26. Art is a bizarre business of dying there or living forever. 27. He is happy who is not afraid not to be rich, sexual, famous or powerful. 28. Do some deep thinking about nothing every day, and you will stay healthy, wealthy and wise. 29. We all have some questions for heaven, but heaven always remains silent. 30. In this age of information, we are all fish swimming freely before the net is towed onto the boat. 31. With the whole world becoming so crowded with salespersons, it is high time to invent new alien buyers for our hearts and souls. 32. Good writing comes from the proper author from the proper place. 33. Political correctness means to see to say nothing as if it were news. 34. Democracy is a government of, by and for the few most manipulative. 35. You may have as many futures as new beginnings, but you can have only one past and one present. 36. Wisdom and religion are different in form but identical in essence: while religion is a ritualized social practice of wisdom, wisdom is an art of staying happy without having to be successful in a social sense. 37. Many stars have already died long before their light reaches our eyes. 38. Schooling is either an interruption or an intervention of learning. 39. Mask is the only garment that will never go out of fashion. 40. Like god who invented man to expel him from heaven, man invented money to drive himself to hell. Life Ride= not really because i have an invalid ticket= but probably because i got on the wrong train= i keep elbowing my way from one car to another= only to find no seat unoccupied or reserved for me= huddling in cold together with my own soul and shadow= i have but the corridor as my claim in this cage-like compartment= there is surely more room and warmth in a sleeping car= yet without the conductor's key i cannot pass the gate= among my fellow passengers are relatives and strangers alike= they will keep me company whether they like my face or not= unawares many have gotten off the train at dawn or dusk= but even more pack onto the cars each time we run idle= i enjoy catching the scenes surging outside the window= my only luggage left when i have to get off at my station To the Homeless neither the first fallen from the overcrowded tree as spring's sole prophet nor the last against night hanging on like a soldier bayoneting with the whole winter you are nothing more or less than an introvert leaf stalking in summer's shadow face faded, body forlorn you are a lonely being, being alone wandering around in a whirlwind rolling over the bumpy roof passing by the wet threshold or sleeping beside the road sign you never care when to disappear or where you have come from except your dreams frosted in a forged fog before the unseeing eyes betwixt the city's pitiful noises you seem a sad withered soul dyed with heavy dusk waiting to witness the ever hardening of autumn but right now who knows deep in you unwalled heart you are flirting with the freedom found only in a permanent house? Chinese Chimes: the Unpatented Quadrants we chinamen, half and quarter chinamen children of eight or sixteenth chinamen constantly pounded with a peculiar pride over our ancestry's four great inventions: the first was paper to transcribe ancient ballads but later often used to give ultimata to your emperors also the printing technique to transmit sages' teachings but later often used to exhibit your ugliest scars a third the compass to help find the golden dragon but later often used to guide your foreign creditors the last gunpowder to launch fireworks at spring festival but later often used to bombard your long walls they chinese, half and quarter chinese children of eight or sixteenth chinese baffled with belief, brief belief that their unknown ancestors happened to invent the wrong stuffs in the right times or the right stuffs in the wrong places Chinese Chimes: the Confession of A Calendar it all began with an animal race Emperor Jade called to amuse himself and his earthly subjects... Rat yes, i admit betraying the cat as my only close friend but i won the race, with my head rather than my legs Ox to honor my contract with the yellow sun i eat green grass, yet give red meat to man Tiger as the only feared king of the thick jungle i am afraid and tired of my own timidness Rabbit with my cagey ears held so high i will not miss a sound of peace Dragon although my portraits hung lively above the clouds no human eyes have ever seen my authentic being Snake the moment i sloughed off my old slim self i forgot ever seducing any manhood in heaven Horse my body looks more masculine than a strong man and my heart feels more feminine than a tender girl Goat when i bleat towards the passers-by i never mean to speak in an other voice Monkey each time i try to find any lice in the corner of my mind i act like the humans outside the fence with barbed wire Roaster with my wings plumed with the feathers of night i can not fly but to crow loudly towards dawn Dog given my canine camaraderie and pack mentality i feel at home before, among or behind soldiers Pig i spend all my lifetime wisely to guard this single moment |
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