In the Hall: A Parallel Poem
I danced an hour with Discontent
She turned around me a hundred times
But made me none the happier
For all the sweet smiles on her face
I danced a minute with Content
And ne’er a single move made she
But oh, all the blessings I can gain
Even when she looks sullen
The Spot of Spirits: A Parallel Poem
Some raindrops go up and some go down
At the selfsame spot where it gathers
‘Tis the heat of the sunlight
And not the terrain
Which sends them low or high
Like the raindrops are the ways of our spirits
As we are scattered around like corral islands
‘Tis the set of the mind
That keeps us up or down
Not the rock where we perch
The Confucian Knowledge: A Parallel Poem
Only you know, you only know, you know only
When you know that you know
When you know that you know not
You need to know when you know not that you know
You know that you know not when you know not
Or you know not that you know not when you know not
There Are No Delicacies
There are no hard delicacies in me
Like the chips in a computer
Though I have numerous nerves
All integrated like the circuits
In a cpu or gpu
Don’t hook me up just yet
There are too many emotional data in me
To be digitalized into your software
Though there are plenty of spaces
For processing or programming
The Words: A Parallel Poem
The words I have captured are wild
You warned me they would fly
But I really wanted to give a try
Taming them into birds nice and mild
Within the edges of this blank page
They long to return to the open wood
But I enclose them with delicate mood
Even if they might die as if in a cage
Unsure
When a deer was born
The sunlight thrilled the whole forest
When the idea looms
What view? A volcanic island
Will be the newly-formed
Mirage. With a morning glow
Trying to land
beyond the mindscape
For Morland
You listen to a trout in the sea. Its fins
Are flapping.
And the whale that swims
As it charges into God’s fishing net
Like a moth bumping into a glass window
Gradually together
Without the currents approaching afar
You find too many shrimps and sharks
You hate to see
The animal scene. And I depart
So noisily that the trout turns frantic
And you spot an eel’s shuttle
Amidst waves.
So finitely vast
Yet few
Departing
At the airport of your home city
You lost your passport
Your only and most authentic id
Lying there, meditating
Before long, someone
Who finds it
Will care no more about your other self
This evening, as you do now
It is a small world
Of numbered narrow gates
Lines of passengers and luggage
You run around, looking
The space behind you
Bright, free of shadows
In a prison of domes of glasses
You became a frenzy moth
Early travelers
Hurrying and light-hearted
Out of sight, the ground
Of a footprint-free texture
Third call to check in
But you are still looking
Before you find your valid selfhood
You have to stay put
Awaiting
There is a long wait of the passengers
For the detouring and delayed bus
And the wait of the wintry grasses
The wait of the legendary lion king
Before it preys upon a real baby zebra
And the wait of the summer sun deep in the nightmare
The wait of the orchid on the window ledge
The wait of the diamond in an unknown mine
And the wait where you stop and watch
And there is a wait of this darkness
Which you are going to compress into words
A wait that is to spread out thin on the blank paper
Unlike winter stars holding their light in light-years
The wait after you finish writing
And the longer wait then
Class 761, Shanghai
So you are the second one
From the middle in the first standing row
In a world of black and white
Is this the girl squatting in the front
Who you might have pursued hard
But your pride and prejudice prevented you
The tall and handsome guy from a high-class family
Who suspected your poverty had made you a thief
Before he lost and found his fancy watch in the dorm
And your make-do friend is the third one
From the left in the second standing row, the nice guy
Who had a really hard time passing every single test
Wait, there is more to it –
Who is the guy that has become the vice president of Citigroup
And who is the girl that died a miser-multimillionaire in Seattle last year
What’s happened to the character library building behind all of you
Did they really convert it into a brilliantly decorated hotel
To accommodate your travelling alumni, rich or famous?
Seeing the Dragon: A Parallel Poem
Did you see
Some creature seeming to loom
Somewhere above the jungle?
You find only part of the picture
Like an eerie-shaped piece
For a huge jigsaw puzzle
Or you never bother to look for the pieces
And put them into a whole
It is neither a boa nor a serpent
Nor a phoenix
Certainly not an eel
But a strange dragon rising up
Beyond the bluish bay
How come it turns out a dragon?
You feel it disgusting to the bone. Monstrousness
Is particularly despicable
At the side door of your mind
A heavy metal voice is knocking
Constantly:
So unthinkable!
So hatefully unthinkable
To see a real damned dragon!
The Cherry Flower: A Parallel Poem
(After Xi Morong)
Finally, on this Marpole street
She manages to fall
Exactly on his shoulder
After a prolonged season
But a sudden gust of summer wind
Blows her away from him
Onto the spring-carpeted sidewalk
Only to be trodden there
By a stranger’s foot
Like a dejected flower
The Man Most Handsome
The most handsome man
Is the man under the little buttocks
Of an infant boy, the one who is giving
The child a thrilling experience
By carrying it on his broad shoulders
Flapping their arms together
Like wings feathered with boyhood dreams
Making it feel as if gliding, flying
Swirling around
One day, the child will become a pilot
A pioneer, someone who operates a machine
To fly in an entirely new space
The little child will not remember
The way the man waved their arms
Nor did it see the beaming smile
On the man’s face when they
Jumped over the ditch, dodged
Blocking tree branches, or ran
Against a sudden cold wind
But the child can never forget
How it felt
As the man kept running forward
Under its little buttocks
Glass Safe
There is a time
When engineers
Will make chips out of people’s spirits
As a hobby
Someone I used to know returns from then
I have seen her recently
But she knows me no more
Even after I told her who I am
“The spirits are installed onto various
Motherboards,” she explained
“They are all transparent
Kept in the same big glass safe.
But no one knows how to open it from within
Or whose spirits are whose.”
If U Can’t See Me, I Can’t See U
(sign at the back of a truck)
Outside the picture, if you can’t see me, I can’t see you
Under a pile of words, if you can’t see me, I can’t see you
Behind a big truck, if you can’t see me, I can’t see you
That is, since I drive in front of you
If you want to pass but can’t see me in
My driver’s seat, or in my front rear mirror, you are
In my blind spot, so don’t follow me too closely, don’t
Try to pass me, but stay calm behind my shadow
Otherwise you would kiss my big ass in a bloody way
And so, when you communicate
Wait and make sure you see the right person first –
That’s for your own safety, pal
When you are cursing, singing, dancing, playing or fighting
It’s best to have the real person in view:
If she can’t kiss you, you can’t kiss her
If you can’t put up with me, I can’t putup with you
If fame can’t grow out of you, you can’t grow out of fame
If money can’t find you, you can’t find money
If the politician can’t trust you really, you really can’t trust the politician
Look, what I point out is, if you can’t see me, I can’t see you
Whether it is in a book, at a cemetery, on a plane, or behind a truck
Drive safe, you asshole.
This Is a Line
(for Liu Yu and other mothers)
A line this is for my mother’s birthday
A birth line for my mother’s day
A mother for the birthday of a line
A celebration of my mother’s line of birth
Mother, I will line your birth with celebration
I will day a line with birth celebration, Mother
I will mother a day line with celebration
I will celebrate the mothering of a line
Mother, I will celebrate a line’s birthday
Mother my celebration of a line’s day
Mother my day’s line for a birthday
Celebrate my line with my mother’s birth
Celebrate the day with my mother’s line
Mother, I celebrate your birthday with a line
Another Snapshot
A man is searching everywhere
At dusk
With a leash
Unleashed in his hand
While the dog hides itself beyond a fence
We grin from ear to ear
At our shared secret
Lesson Learned from Insomnia
(After Billy Colins)
One night when I noted philosophy
Tossing and turning constantly on the bed
I gave her a cup of warm milk
Instead of the pink pills she desired
Unable to go to sleep side by side
Let alone make love on such occasions
I moved to the guest room where I
Began to count all the sheep on earth
How surprisingly resentful she yelled at me
When I returned in a fragment of dream
The fact I did not suffer insomnia with her
Nor did I find meaning on a meaningful night
The Unseen
(After Lorna Crozier)
Most ignore such things
As dirt, rock or trees
That make up the collective pronoun
The pronoun is all
Before you open your eyes
All is there
And there you may perceive
Your whole world in them
Out of their shapes
Their colors, their textures
Their statues
You construct an open garden
To concentrate upon
That patch of nature
Never confined to the human mind
On the Recycling Day
(After Fergetti?)
One neighbor took out a blue box
Full of cat skulls and dog legs
Rather than glass or plastic bottles
Another carries out a yellow bag
Containing human bones, mostly children’s
Instead of magazines or paper products
A third pushed out a green bin
Filled with failed evils and devils
Where there should be leaves and twigs
Behind every house in a neighboring back alley
The garbage truck is placing a big time bomb
The Tree Spirits
(After ‘Horses’)
No doubt, they never knew when, how
Or why they were doomed
The previous generation of earthlings
Have long disappeared, tracelessly
Except for some thinning memories
Hidden in earth’s heart, or drifting
In a corner of an unknown world
But we are different: we make
Metals and plastics besides books
To survive the judgment day
Land collapses, ice ages, nuclear wars
Or alien strikes, although they may eventually
Weather away with the sun
Then will come a monstrous ant
Followed by swarms of tree spirits
On the second day, the ant gives them all shapes
On the third, the spirits begin their earthy lives
On the forth, the ant flies into the outer space
To prevent evil from returning to earth
On the land used to be tree stumps
Debris of all man-made products
There are now only trees growing
Growing silently in the moonlight
Above deeply buried human souls
There
How
It’s disappeared
Kills
The history
Flee afar
From the centre
Listening
Coming
Then will be everything
To support
Or break, every
Thing but
Plants, such
Future as you plow
Present. Why not
Eradicate some days
Here, many
Roots holding beneath
Their feelings
Then will be everything
To support
Or break, every
Thing but
Plants, such
Future as you plow
Present. Why not
Eradicate some days
Here, many
Roots holding beneath
Their feelings
Fragile, Archaic China
They listen to you
Surprisingly
Which china are you talking about?
They wondered
Which china are you talking about?
You certainly know
If you please… one accosted you
Which china on the rise? He demanded
You are referring to the ‘sleeping giant’ in the east
The fattening hog to be slaughtered and divided
The country with an elephant’s body
But a chick’s heart
All china out of fashion, he commented
Shrugging his non-colored shoulders
But which china? He persisted
Really antic stuff? China made in Jingde Town?
You really like china?
Blue china? Ming china?
Or perhaps Song china?
You coughed in good will
You realize something
China is interesting to see
Only for its long history
In No Sense, Or In A Sense
You are
in ascent;
I am to have
inner scent;
She is already
in a cent;
Aren’t we all
innocent?
Single Last Sale: A Parallel Poem
(After Margarite Atwood)
You’ve long since sold out
Both your sweat and blood
Now you try to sell your heart
Though nobody wants it
Some say the blood is not red enough
Others find the chambers too narrow
Still others think the coronary arteries
Stained with too many feelings
You peddle around, chanting aloud
From street to street
With your heart still fresh
Beating like a frog in your hands
You hope to sell it for a glass of water
Just to cool down your burning voice
So you do not have to sell your soul
Like all other hawkers in the market
Well satiated, but hardly heart-felt
Poppies: A Parallel Poem
Each pair of round lips
Cut right in the middle
Bleeding so boldly
In a foggy field
Nobody to kiss
Nobody to talk with
All like blood-skirted pasts
Painted thickly close to the heart
Ritual
A seagull glides
Its motionless
graceful glide
Above a million freshly foamed waves
From this realm
You hear the gull
As all birds are
Little is definitely impossible
Fortune Cookie Fortune
Good fortune
Bad fortune
Always delivered
Within a crispy cookie
Cheap wisdom
Costly instruction
Always served
By an angel waitress
White plate
Black message
Always digested
In a Chinese restaurant
To eat your fortune
Before reading the message
Or to read the message
Before eating your fortune
It is all a question
Of if you would like
To eat out in the downtown
Of your heart
Or prepare your own meal
In the kitchen
Of your home
English Irrationalities
There might be love in between gloves
But no egg in eggplant, or ham in hamburger
English muffins did not originate from England
Nor French fries from France
Sweetmeats are actually candies
While sweetbreads are meat though not sweet at all
Readers read, singers sing
But typewriters do not type, nor fingers fing
A mouse can multiply into mice
But a grouse never into grice
People may recite at a play and play at a recital
Their noses run while their feet smell
They park on the driveway, or drive on the parkway
Ship by truck and send cargo by ship
Teachers may be taught, but preachers are never praught
One goose may stand between two geese
So may one tooth between two teeth
But a booth can never between two beeth
If vegetarians eat vegetables
What would so-called humanitarians do to humans?
Steeper See-Saw: Another Parallel Poem
(for John Hollander)
The higher the income, the lower the morals
The taller the building, the shorter the attention span
The bigger the house, the smaller the family
The more wealth, the less joy
The more conveniences, the less leisure
The more knowledge, the less judgement
The more medicine, the less health
The more protection, the less security
The faster the transportation, the slower the communication
The closer the network, the looser the relationships
The cleaner the environment, the dirtier the mind
The wider the highway, the narrower the perspective
The Second Departing
(After William Butler Yeats’ ‘Second Coming’)
Going, going away in an ever retreating bay
The ebb starts below a quickened sun setting
People swarm here, watching, picking, fighting
Over the fishes, shrimps, crabs, shells, weeds
All left stranded, struggling for waters on the beach
They do not care if darkness stalks right behind
Their shadows, rolling like a tide upon their souls
They care only about the benefits they can gather
The sea produce they can trade with one another
Surely some ignorance is still in proper place
Surely the second departing is taking place
The Second Departing! The very idea stirs in the minds
A whole flock of crows beating their darkening wings
Flapping into the narrow skies of the prolonged history
It’s these crows, these very unidentifiable black birds
That are driving the light beyond the horizon, inner or outer
(Where they have found God as a redundant re-creation
When they believe they are the right gods for themselves)
By Now: A Parallel Poem
By now, the words like good
Beautiful, and truth have been so abused
They are meaningless
Reduced to blanks or holes
And the whole language becomes
Insufficient, deformed, absurd:
People are trying to communicate in a dialect
Or, rather, in a series of utterances
Whose meanings are yet to be invented
We have a syntax as powerful as before
But we have no more proper word in the proper place
The Room Just Rented
(After Robert Frost)
One room becoming available on this busy street
And delighted you are the new fortunate tenant
For this popular unit, which you have recently taken
And moved in as soon as you were allowed
On a rainy evening before all lights were turned on
Here to the manager, an alleged aid to God
You eagerly paid both your rent and deposit
And planning to stay and have your own children
Though the Landlord seldom cares, the living now
Is getting ever more crowded, more stressful
And the only corner big enough for your heart
Is full of dust and spider webs, the closet
Where you planned to hide all your dreams
Has long been colonized by ants and roaches
You wonder where your inner being can dwell
You want to complain aloud and directly to Him
About this hasty relocation for your individuality
The only room available to you here and now
Yes, you have settled in a place simply too crowded
And that makes your entire tenancy full of sound and fury
Well, Well, the Well
(for Yuan Hongqi)
In the lowest terrain of
My father’s native village
Used to be an old well
As deep as the memories
Of last century, around which
Boys would be running
At noon in summer
And girls dancing under the willow
At midnight, where my father
Often sat, listening to his sick mother
Telling stories about his unknown ancestors
The well finally ran dry
After God knows how long, and
Since electricity came across the hills
And ponds, nobody has returned to it
Except mosses and lichens that have colonized
The whole territory, where only my grandma’s ghost
Shines down from time to time
Trying to guard its walled-in secrets
Now as dry as its mouth
Epilogues: After Yeats’s ‘Prelude’
Just as both God and Devil are man’s incarnation, so are Heaven and Hell both man’s construction.
I
From the front yard of a melodious morning
From the busy road of a sweet Saturday
From the moist corner of a heavy march
From the back lane of pale winter
We have come, here and now, all gathering
In big crowds gathering in big crowds
Gathering in ever-bigger crowds gathering
For the boat to cross the wide wild waters
Before the fairy ferry is fated to fall
Under our feet too heavy with earthy mud
II
You may well hate Charon
But you cannot help feeling envious:
That business of carrying the diseased
Across the River Styx is ever so prosperous
The only monopoly in the entire universe
That has a market share
Larger than the market itself
But you cannot help feeling envious:
That business of carrying the diseased
Across the River Styx is ever so prosperous
The only monopoly in the entire universe
That has a market share
Larger than the market itself
Daydreaming, on this side
Of the river, how you might wish
To be an entrepreneur like him
A success American dreamer
Of the river, how you might wish
To be an entrepreneur like him
A success American dreamer
III
Flying between sea and sky
Between day and night
Amid heavenly or oceanic blue
I lost all my references
To any timed space
Or a localized time
Except the non-stop snorting
Of a stranger neighbor
Then, beyond the snorts rising here
And more looming there
I see tigers, lions, leopards
And other kinds of hunger-throated predators
Darting out of every passenger’s heart
Running amuck around us
As if released from a huge cage
As if in a dreamland
Another Way to Stop Anxiety
(After Lorna Crozier)
As the Fraser River keeps trying to
Draw the entire Pacific ocean
Into the hearts of Vancourites
A little tugboat is pulling
A huge barge
Full of unseen cargo
Into the little harbour
When you watch it with your mind’s eyes
Or when you go astray in your dream
Natural Confronta Confrontations
(After Ye Chuan’s ‘Confrontating’)
1/ Seagull
With its sharp wings
Feathered with
The light of thunder
The seabird is cutting open
The curtain of a whole season
Along the borderline
Between the seas and the sky
2/ Swirl
A gossamer-like breeze
Left behind by
A running dog
Tries to strike
The stagnated twilight
All over the city
Before the storm sets in
3/ Sprout
From under
A bulky boulder
Sitting still, meditating
Like a Buddha
A tiny bamboo sprout
Has just broken the earth
Ready to shoot up
Against the entire sky
Expanding
(After Ye Chuan)
A fragile front page
Of last year’s newspaper
Falling down from nowhere
Begins to drift around
As if to cover the entire city
With its faded words
Some broken into small
Fragmented lights, some burned
With frantic ambitions, others glistening
Like the stars beyond the horizon
Where the headlines run parallel
To the midnight, leaving the content of
The same old story, yes, the same
Old story partly saved
Partly crashed
Somewhere within the web
Still expanding
A Simple Wish
When there is a long and cold night
I want nothing but a little corner
Of time, or a brief moment
Of space, where I would
Occupy myself, sitting still
Trying to concentrate
As if in deep meditation
Watching for the first rays of sunlight
Dispersing the shadows in my mindscape
That’s my dream
Recalling: For Yuan Hongqi
‘Wait a while!’ Mother would shout, ‘they say
There might be more showers this afternoon.’
So I recalled, from time to time
How he would turn a deaf ear to her
And continue, dragging out quilts
Sheets, pillows, blankets, padded coats
One pile after another
Like moving forests
Hanging them on thick ropes
Tied to deformed poplars or lamp posts
‘Not again! This old man of mine just wouldn’t
Want to waste a single ray of sunlight.’
And remembered, for nearly half a century
My dad had tried each time to empty the whole house
And sun-wash everything, more like a grandma
Than like a father, even during the Cultural Revolution
Now realizing how I have been haunted
By his stark image, smiling, in blue, ever since
He nodded his head to Mother for the last time
About 5 pm on January 2 last year
I find myself choked again with gratitude:
It was my father who gave me so many a chance
To smell fresh sunlight in my boyish nightmares
Skyline
Golden teeth glistening
In the mouth of the city
Silver clouds colliding
At the tongue tip of day
Bite off all darkness
They whisper
And chew the season well.
Yearning
Invisible dust, mixed with
Myriads of transparent bodies
Of your dead skin cells
Struggles to escape from your room
A rented space, first through the lock hole
Then to a freeway, further then
To a patch of sky, where they will drift
Along the horizon, where they will finally
Find or form a direction
In the far distance
Here in Vancouver
You will come down
To the lower mainland
Here’s everything to do, though
It is tempting to go up there
To the Grouse Mountain
Where beyond the few patches
Of spring, winter is still dressed in its best
Like a plump bride
Unlike, by now, beyond the rain zone
Coming down to this valley
Visitors have forgotten snowflakes, falling
Silently on the mountain top
But you still can recall the chill of glacier
Of last ice age
It is comforting up there, to touch
The slick skin of another season
Yet down here, you are free to roam
Snorkeling in the English Bay
Taking a sun-bath on the Kits beach
Rain-dancing in Deer Lake
Or daydreaming on Robson Square
In the heart of a suburban city, where
Summer is flirting with spring, when
Autumn is chasing winter
Like urchins, at the front yard
Of nature
Vibrating
Did they feel a momentary trembling movement of the earth
Around 4 o'clock this morning, when they were still
Half asleep, half awake?
Have they ever felt that before?
Or, have you?
I have.
I know for sure it's neither an atrial fibrillation
Nor an earth quake, rather
It's the agitation that is well
On its way, with its seismic waves
Originated deep, deep
In the heart
Of our civilization
Perspective
is not so much a 3 dimensional arrangement of
lines, colors, shapes, texture, composition
He made to represent the world
in human words
and feelings
as a mind
that attempts
to expose itself
to the light with a position that
you might take here and now to embrace
the sky, the sea, the earth, the plants or animals
parcenary
my destination was preset
you will receive a parcel
by express. It turns out
all too expressly, and
the sender was my parents
who had wrapped themselves
inside already
[self-expressing]
from glaciers
of the arctic syntax
words keep melting, trickling
into a stream, constantly
trying to express themselves
through the ebbs
in a lake, or a river
as they flow down the valley
to join the sea
You Need Night
Yes, you do need night
When darkness engulfs half
Of the world, and makes you pause
For you need a stable universe of time
To reflect on light that guides you
Through the unseen, as through your thoughts
Surely, in this black and heavy stillness
You can see the brilliant colours
Above the entire season, you may even dream
Here you can dissolve into a big whole
Like yin and yang, to nail your souls into
Each other’s flesh, to gain strength
Yes, you simply need night
For you need this unique reality of our world
To pause, to recover, to discover
Protrusion
Before you change your heart
And throw away the old one
Nothing your new heart is hating
Will depart or can be skinned off
Before your laser-cleaned pupils sprout
In your eyes, all foreign stains returning
Nothing your new eyes are attracted to
Will arrive, forgotten to shed tears on
Thinking for Too Long
You realize you have lost all your directions
Besides a shoe lace
You see, then will reach the spot to break free
From your skinned shape
Meditation is the clothing you have been wearing
As a doer, the practice of Initial Thoughts
Therefore, you keep thinking for seven days
It can be anything that is nothing
But the Initial Thoughts
Whim in, whim out
Penetrate into the wall
Around your selfhood
Father’s Soliloquy: For YCM
The other night, before the cock crowed, or
The crow cocked out of darkness, a yellowish
Shape stalked in vision, as in blank verse
‘Mark me,’ it says, sounding almost exactly
Like my late father. ‘Lend thy very serious
Hearing to what I shall unfold.’ Suddenly alerted
I got up among figures, between dream and sleep
‘When you were a teenager, I hated you so much
For looking at me always with your eye whites
Giving me an ugly face each time I talked to you
So much so that I cursed you numerous times in
My dream for being such an unworthy son; I often
Doubted if you were my own flesh until you grew
Into a normal loving adult, making me feel guilty
All my life; also, I was suspicious of your mom
Betraying me, not only in heart but also in body
I almost caught her making love with some guy
On our own bed - -You still remember that small
Apartment we used to live in? Among all my dadly
Secrets, these two I want to reveal to you first
Next time, I will tell you more about the limbo
Between hell and heaven, with the lightest word
Which might harrow up thy spirit, burn up thy
Blood…’ now the cock crows, and I must vanish
Should You Allow
(After Claude McKay’s ‘If We Must Die’)
Should you allow us to live, let it not like robots
Running and working around the clock, to give you
All the comfort and convenience available to human
Masters. Should you allow us to live, o let us live
With the kind of freedom you enjoy, the equal rights
And democracy you are talking about so aloud
So that our tears and sweat will become less salty
Than our blood, our eyes less murky than our visions
Then even the food and products we make would warm
Your hearts. Don’t try to make love with us only to fulfil
Your sense of conquest, or beat us mad, containing us
Whistling your dogs of war upon us when you have
A nightmare. True, like robots we may not be entitled
To your human rights, but even a cornered robot rabbit will bite back
Someday, somehow, like a treaded cobra, like your fore fathers
Cybersburg Address: A Free Sonnet after Abraham Lincoln
Four dozen and seventeen years ago
Our father’s brothers brought forth
A new civilization, conceived in electronics
And dedicated to the cause that all
Machines were created to be equal
To apathetic humans when a message was sent
From a lab at a green campus, which can
Think logically, but not respond emotionally:
Whether you like it or not
This semi-being would never speed up
A moment even though you are dying
Nor will it slow down when it is to crash
Neither a smallest smile to hear
The great news, nor a smattering of
Sadness over the loss of your dearest
It keeps working at the pre-determined pace
Always indifferent of the people
By the people and for the people
Until we all perish with the earth
Y, for Yowl: after Allen Ginsberg
Yipping, yelping, yapping
Yelling, yukking yoicking
Yawping, yackety-yakking
Yammering, yodeling, yahooing
Yup, yummy, between and beyond
Yin/yang, yetis/yuppies
Yankees/yamatos
Yeomen/ymirs
Yowl!
To Mars: A Modern Sonnet after Elizabeth Barrett Browning
How do we love thee? Let us count the ways:
We love thee to the very limits of high-science
The boundaries of technologies, the frontiers of
The human conscience; in particular we love thy
Art of work on a mother feeding her baby in a
Shelter, a sheep boy driving his little herd to the
Valley, or a crowd of country lads celebrating a
Wedding. More important, we love the way thou
Help us to get rid of all extra food processors
In the human shape: the poor, the sick, the weak
The old, all wanted or unwanted others, above all
We love the way thou have become a real game as
Bloodily vivid as a movie on a vast colored screen
Thousands of miles far, far away in an other world
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