Trioscaping

Changming Yuan

Landscaping

Seasonscape: A Module Poem

Spring: like a raindrop

on a small lotus leaf

unable to find the spot

to settle itself down

in an early autumn shower

my little canoe drifts around

near the horizon

beyond the bare bay

Summer: in her beehive-like room

so small that a yawning stretch

would readily awaken

the whole apartment building

she draws a picture on the wall

of a tremendous tree

that keeps growing

until it shoots up

from the cemented roof

Autumn: not unlike a giddy goat

wandering among the ruins

of a long lost civilization

you keep searching

in the central park

a way out of the tall weeds

as nature makes new york

into a mummy blue

Winter: after the storm

all dust hung up

in the crowded air

with his human face

frozen into a dot of dust

and a rising speckle of dust

melted into his face

to avoid this cold climate

of his antarctic dream

he relocated his naked soul

at the dawn of summer

Beyond the Blue

there is no borderline

between sea and sky

waves are pushing their colors

up towards the air, bloating

their calls and songs to bold

changing shapes

it is a world within nature

presenting itself, or what

cannot be represented elsewhere

separated from the mind

the frame always trying to capture

a few fish swimming in the waters

Sun Setting above the Sea

Like an all-faced fisherman

Too excited about a long day’s catch

The sun eagerly drags its net of light

Bigger than the universe itself

Onto the thickening skyline

Leaving behind nothing glittering with fish scales

In the shadow of night

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

Sea View

However winds blow

All waves keep pushing forward

Towards the shore

Only the light rays at sunset

Retreating to the ocean’s heart

Like a flock of pigeons

Returning to their cage

Nightscape

You saw the clouds near the skyline
Drifting around in an earthly dance
You hear the evening clearing its throat
As if to address a huge crowd

Close to your dream explodes around
The heavy metal music of the inner city
When high above the streets
The moon flees like a startled seagull

Spring Scenery

As the morning fog

Stalks away on its fluffy feet

All boughs

Unanimously agree

To take action

By bursting themselves

With dripping green buds

Little dimples

In myriads

Across the widely smiling face

Of spring

Tree and Flower

tender and charming

peach blossoms fallen

into a transparent dream

on the unmowed lawn

whose snoring disturbs

the wakening leaves

i would like to give them

a melodious kiss

but I cannot—

i am the peach tree

still still

Crows in the Sunlight

Soon after their dreamless roosting

The crows on the boughs begin to look up

Some ready to fly, some to land

Beyond the darkest moments of last night

Disturbed by their calls, a solitary squirrel

Climbing down the tree, crossing the fence

To a pasture no greener than the leaves

But there is certainly more sunshine

More photosynthesizing, under the golden film

As I walk past, neither the crows

Nor the squirrel bothers to notice my presence

Why should they be startled away? It is me

Trespassing a new territory between day and night

Where the crows hide their night-dyed feathers

Mushroom

With neither dignity

Of a canopy

Nor myth

Of an aureole

Your cap is simply too small

Your stem too short

Your geared-bones too tender

Yet your fleshy body has inspired

Myriads of umbrellas

To shield gods and humans alike

Against rain or heat

Against history

Summer Scenery

The galley of an unknown author’s work

In a fully justified format:

Every stark hill italicized

Every glaring lake capitalized

With no single tree misspelled

Or single flower misplaced

Again and yet again, the sun has

Proofread the text

With all its attention

And

Found everything just ready to go

At Sunrise in Summer

You leap from the valley

Like an infant newly delivered

Your umbilical cord just cut off

From mother universe

To establish your own

Circulation of bloody light

Why not get up and open

Every skylight on the roof

Turning on the sun’s big tap

To take a morning shower

And cleanse all the darkness

Accumulated on our skins

tattooed by the night?

Corn

A whole body of teeth

Nothing but teeth

To chew the passing summer

We bite off from you

All the pearl-like memories

Tinged with sunlight

A hard but juicy kiss

Sunflower

To demonstrate their heliotropism

They all keep saluting

To the summer sun, constantly moving

But at this private spot

You alone refuse to flatter light during the day

Bow towards the east at night

Even take a look beyond the foggy fields

Close to the fence between day and night

You hold your head high, trying

To mould every little conception

Into a silver bullet aimed at Venus

Autumn Scenery

between two sharp chest ribs

of an isolated birch skeleton

dusk-dyed and wind-carved

hung still on an invisible wall

comes to perch an ageing crow

whose bold beak holds a cold

and pale prophesy old

with all withered leaves palette-cut

blowing towards gates and doors

like the fliers sent randomly

from an alien chain store

Stream Moonset in Autumn

Close your eyes

Stay still

And you can feel

The moon’s silver needles

Softly pointed

Penetrating tranquility

Into your head, hand and heart

Like Chinese acupuncture

Flying balmy filaments

At you and me alike

Although ten thousand miles apart

Open your eyes

The light is streamwater

Spattering down from heaven

Upon your shaded shoulders

Whirling up and splashing about

Into stars, if you can

Catch just one droplet

Hurling it into the backyard

Out of the broken window

Of your fenced mind

The symphony of night

Tender

Pumpkins

Arhats
squatting around in a foggy field

each flushed with protests
against frost coming all too soon

Buddha puts you there
to guard an entire season
but we will relocate you
to guard our rented houses

the last of a fast-fading landscape
the last to ripen

Dandelion

As the wind rises

Again

We begin to wander

Once more

With all our white

And fluffy wishes

Across an unwelcoming land

With no definite direction

No hope of settling down

Among inhabitants of Hollow Hills

Except the willful wind

Until we collapse

Into soundless seeds

When suddenly caught

By a bone of grass

In the Twilight

As the night began to dye the whole day

With its long and dark shadows

The man and his dog bowed over the huge tub

Of an autumn evening

Their faces becoming greyer

Like two sparrows pecking with leisure

At the few dregs of sunlight

Left over on the lawn

All worn out

Sorghum

Swarms of baby bees

Attracted to the head of every sugar cane

All busy sucking the sweet from mother earth

Or collecting sunlight for a rainy day

Far beyond the fields of late summer

They stand tall above evening arrays

As if to salute the new crescent moon

Like red reeds, with red seeds

Poppies

Each pair of round lips

Cut right in the middle

Bleeding so boldly

In a foggy fields

Nobody to kiss

Nobody to talk with

All like blood-skirted pasts

Painted thickly close to the heart

Winter Scenery: The Black Bird

so little triggers
off

a black bird
the nexus of antithesis
foiled with snow
light

to fly into the vast history of
gray

Winter Sleep

between padded sheets

i envelope both

my senses and soul

and stamp my naked body

with a gear-edged dream

put into the big mailbox of night

and send my suppressed self

far away from home

to a strange place

unregistered

Wintry Willow

What a strangely familiar blizzard

That has blown your bare body

To the far end of the prairie

Standing stiff at the still cliff

You listen to the muted monologue of the valley

With all your hardened heart

Then and there, in the shape of the wind

You start to shake off your silver branches

Like a huge skeletal seagull beating its wings wildly

Eager to flap into the northern lights

Ode to Huyang Tree

in the most remote corner

of the wild wild west of china

along the sharpened edges

of the great gobi

beyond the surging waves

hostile to humans and animals alike

where even the dry wind is choked

with sand dying of thirst

you are the only life form

with leaves green and shady

standing firmly alone

with no dignity

but full of pride

you are little known to foreign visitors

who find it hard to pronounce your true name

nor do you even have a definition

in the dictionary of colonists

yet among the native uighurs

you are worshipped with wonder

as a living legend:

you do not die

until after one thousand years

you do not fall

one thousand years after your death

and you do not decay

one thousand years

long after you finally fall

At Zhangjiajie, A UNESCO Designated Nature Park

Slim, tall and sedate
In the fluffiest garments
Of no human design
Each hill stands like a female model
Trying to display her charm and dignity
As if in a grand fashion show or
Like a fairy maiden at a casual party
Lost in a game unknown to passers-by

Amidst the morning mists
Flirtatious expressions of summer hills
I indulge myself in fits of a lover’s impulses
To give every protruding rock a dry kiss
And every slender tree a huge hug

I cannot help feeling deeply embarrassed
When my allen asks: who are they, dad?

Confucian Gentility: Floral Haiku

Orchid: Deep in the valley

Alone on an obscure spot

You bloom none the less

Lotus: From foul decayed silt

You shoot clean against the sun

Never pollutable

Mum: Hanging on and on

Even when wishes wither

You keep flowering

Plum: Your brave bold blood dropped

As though to melt all world’s snow

Before spring gathers

Sightseeing at Harrison Lake

under a wishful willow

on the bench's bare back

are awkwardly carved

many names, initials, heartshapes

some densely isolated

others thinly connected

with plus or equal signs

making a whole new monument

a tortured totem of tourism

unoccupied, probably reserved

there's no sudden heat of hope

or quick burial of burned burins

yet like a huge fish fossilized

sitting still in open solitude

towards the hills drifting beyond

as if to wait at the waterfront

for the long lost syllables

stranded below the setting sun

Animal Virtue

in the big mouth

of an african alligator

open wide as broad daylight

a little nameless bird

is pecking joyfully

with leisure and pleasure

at his tooth slit

as if flirting with her bulky lover

trying to protect her

against the sun

burning flesh and earth

around the old

weak, sick and disabled

as well as innocent colts

the zebras get ready to build

a circle of wall

with their naked bodies

each time a lion looms

and waits for his first chance

to prey on one of the unlucky

alone and quietly

the doomed elephant

the once strongest of the rain forest

retreats deeper and deeper

into the limberlost of distances

struggling to die somewhere

in an unknown corner

far beyond the tusking territory

of his silent survivors

to keep their hope alive
The Cycle of A Life

The Egg: roundish, yellowish

Like a morning dewdrop

Hanging on the east side of

An unknown leaf, ready

To be hatched out

By the warm sunlight

Of late spring

The Larva: with stripes and patches

So fashionable as a fancy garment

You keep wriggling, wriggling

Towards the heat of south

As if to display your pride

Over your colored being

The Pupa: Unlike a south China cicada

Trying to slough off its old self

For a different song of the west wind

You wrap up your outer life

With your innermost thoughts

About reaping sorghum

In the far fields of autumn

The Imago: As colored snowflakes

Beat their wings

Against northern dreams

You forget whether you

Are the butterfly, or the

Butterfly is you among

White wintry wishes

Mindscaping

Directory of Directions: A Module Poem

North: after the storm

all dust hung up

in the crowded air

with his human face

frozen into a dot of dust

and a rising speckle of dust

melted into his face

to avoid this cold climate

of his antarctic dream

he relocated his naked soul

at the dawn of summer

South: like a raindrop

on a small lotus leaf

unable to find the spot

to settle itself down

in an early autumn shower

my little canoe drifts around

near the horizon

beyond the bare bay

Center: deep from the thick forest

a bird’s call echoes

from ring to ring

within each tree

hardly perceivable

before it suddenly

dies off into the closet

of a noisy human mind

West: not unlike a giddy goat

wandering among the ruins

of a long lost civilization

you keep searching

in the central park

a way out of the tall weeds

as nature makes new york

into a mummy blue

East: in her beehive-like room

so small that a yawning stretch

would readily awaken

the whole apartment building

she draws a picture on the wall

of a tremendous tree

that keeps growing

until it shoots up

from the cemented roof

My Crow

As an ancient Chinese saying goes

Crows everywhere are equally black

But this one in the backyard of my heart

Is as white as a summer cloud

I have fed him with fog and frost

Until his feathers, his flesh

His calls and even his spirit

All turned into white like winter washed

My crow’s wings will never melt

Even when flying close to the sun

South China Cicada

no human ear has ever heard of you

cloistering yourself deep in the soil

silently sucking all sounds from roots

for more than thirteen years in a row

until high up on a summer painted twig

you slough off your earthly self

pouring all your being in a single song

before the sun sets for the yellow leaf

Bow and Arrow

For a whole decade of

Delays and detours

You have failed after all

To find the golden bow

Yet you still hold this arrow

Close to your heart

Ready to draw it

As straight as a day dream

At the setting summer sun

Fossil Fish

not every fish can

transform into a fossil

not every fossil

can be found fulfilled

yet unfortunately favored

by the formidable fate

i am a fossil

that used to be a fish

to avoid being drowned

in my own blue dreams

i swam, swum, and swimming

with the weeping wind

against the sweeping waves

until at a hot moment of spot

i became fossilized

my skeleton is my story

simple

My Crow, My Other Life

Every morning, even before I open

My eyes, the little doors of the cage

My crow cannot wait to flutter out

Into the light-washed heavens

Striking its transparent wings into beating

Every night, even after I put

The cage back inside my cozy house

The bird still glides close to the moon

With its wings feathered with spirits

Forgetting to return home

Sometimes I wonder why

Day after day, night after night

It refuses to settle softly in its cage

Like a domesticated parrot

Were I it, would I?

Or you, once the cage broken

Would the bird return

Coo itself into sleep, dreaming

Of celestial freedom?

Name Changing

Confucius once said

If the name is not right

Language will carry no might

So my father created my name

By rearranging the sun and moon

Vertically and horizontally

To equip it with all

The forces of yin and yang

Dispersed in the universe

Since I became subject

To a totally different grammar

All people have complained

Or made fun of my name

So harsh and awkward

They conspire to seduce me

To adopt a familiar one

Like Michael in the powerful speech

But to retain the subtle balances

In the wild wild world I wander

To hold my father’s sunbeam

With my mother’s moonlight

I fiercely refuse to change it

Even though I often feel lost

When the sounds I hear

Do not sound like my name at all

Dancing with Crane

I show her how to move her steps

But she’s much too timid

Worse still, she cannot coordinate with my movements

And

Although she dances with me, to an unheard melody

It’s her own music she’s dancing to

She likes the way I hold her

And

Even lets me kiss her shoulder from time to time

so richly white and velvety

But she always keeps me at bill’s length

Each time I come closer

She backs off with a glaring scream

What have I done so wrong?

What is in her mind?

Jumping off the stage

She shows her best, which is a scarlet crest

Like plum petals blown onto the wall of west

I beg her to return

And

So she did, but only to depart from me again

Outside the spotlight

She begins to beat her wide wings against my blue wishes

Her eyes sparkling, as if saying to me

I have my neck and legs

Both too thin and too long to be your partner here

In this cage-like hall

And

Worse still, she’s much too timid

Sowing After “Digging”

Above an empty sheet of paper

With lines like the thin ridges

In an open fallow field

My snug pen squats

As if waiting in ambush

Below my window, my father’s shaking shadow

Is shrinking slowly but surely

Into a focus constantly adjusted

By the noon sun of spring

As he scatters some strange seeds

Over the soil like salted brown rice

He has been preparing since last winter

By god, the old man enjoys sowing

Even more than his old man

My grandfather died at the age of 29

In a hilly village in central china

He had cast every drop of his soiled sweat

Onto a field not belonging to himself

It is said that he reaped little in autumn

Nor did he really care about reaping

Like a bridegroom planting his plump sperm deep

In his bride’s virgin field on a mid-summer night

I am now sowing, with my pen

Ischemia

In my line of people, especially on my father’s side

There never seems to have been ample blood

Running within the arteries behind our Chinese chests

No matter how warm-hearted we actually are

As in the case of my father, who used to

Accuse me of being an ill-hearted teenager

My heart muscle is imbalanced

As one side is less infused with blood

Than the other, thus causing palpitation

Short breath, and a strong sense of

Tightness, heaviness or tiredness about life

To diagnose my cardiovascular defection

Neither an echo nor a stress test is needed

For I am keenly aware of my own doomed

Arteries that have been clotted

With too many syllables

Voiced or voiceless

And to make all these sounds flow out of my heart

Is already stressful enough

Nevertheless, I will keep pumping out these words

All so blood-soaked

Me & Them

First, they looked but without seeing

So, I began to yell in a yellow voice

Then, they listened but without hearing

So, I cooked according to a Chinese recipe

Still, they smelt but without tasting

So, I melt myself into spring water

Finally, they touched but without feeling

So, I began to tattoo words on my own heart

Single Last Sale

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

Day & Night

The day has no ears

The heart but a myriad

The noises glare

Where life’s grievance begins

The night has no eyes

The mind but a myriad

The shadows collide

When your spirit bites at the light

Uncertainty

Just as the shadow beyond the light

Is fictional, and fictional is

The word on the paper or screen

So is this hand also fictional

That writes from the heart of the night?

All the feelings swarmed together

What I meditated, flows

I wonder if this life of mine

Is posthumous before the birth

Of a refracted metaphor?

Light vs Shadow

Was it the shadow?

Was it the shadow beyond?

Was it the shadow beyond the shadow?

Still fell the thick night,

When the heart blocked the light.

Yes, it is light!

It is light within!

It is light within light!

Loud sweeps the morning glow,

Where the mind has no shadow.

Butterfly Being: Zhuangzi Revisited

Neither a human

Dreaming of being a butterfly

Nor a butterfly

Dreaming of being a human

But simply a moth egg

Attached firmly

To a yellowish leave

Within the human mind

Or perhaps the other way around

Am I?

Replacing
Running short of bulbs
I planted some root words instead
Along the fence
In the backyard of my mind
All winter
They seemed dreaming under the frozen soil
When the last dews fly away
You will see certain three-colored tulips
Blooming aloud
Towards the early summer sun

White Calls

How many times

Have you lain in thick darkness

Imagining a white crow

That you wish to see

Or rather to be

Not until the other morning

Did you hear a wild bird crying

Like a persistent knock

At the door of your heart

Beyond your curtained window

Beyond your curtained dream

It was a crow hammering all its white yaws

Right into your soul

Resonating with your truer selfhood

The Worn Worm

This is a transparent creature

Gnawing at the tiny roots

Of my withering senses

Before it becomes a chrysalis

Buried deep in my heart’s soil

Then it tries to climb out

Sucking all the fresh dews

Held long in my staring eyes

Before it begins to beat

Its blue wings against the frog

Then it will fly away

On a cloudless day

Chronometry

I kissed your morning

With mine, and held

Your night closely with mine too

Between your spring and autumn

I lay my summer

Deep in winter

From your January through February

To your March, I wrap your April and May

With my June and July

Within your August

I use my September or October

To caress both your November and December

And right from your moment

I suck my whole year

Wintry Vision

Two little crows

Popping up

From nowhere

Try to

Establish themselves:

Two truths

On the skeletal tree top

Yawing fiercely

Towards the sky, the wind, the buildings

The fields and the entire afternoon

All so fluffy white

In jade-toned snow

The Crow and the Butterfly

you like the crows in your backyard

other birds are much less plain

but they fly too high

or too far for your heart

stranded here

you envy the butterfly in your frontyard

The most beautiful

thought also most lonely

As the spring sets

under her floral wings

Chameleon

-- when it looks in a mirror, what color does it have?

constantly

changing your skin color

with light

temperature

or emotion

they know it for sure

but isn’t it

their eyes

changing

with their minds

their hearts

their tongues

longer even than yours

we are actually colorless

aren’t we?

The Unseen

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

Secret Spirit

for years I sought light in darkness
with my eyes open wide as my mouth
I called, I sang, I prayed, I pleaded
for rays that might come down from above

now I seek darkness in light instead
with my ears closed tight as my eyes
yet I cannot find a shred of my soul's

shadow, even in a midnight dream

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 put up 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.

Drawing the Dragon

There was a contest

Once

For the most faithful representation

Of loong

(Or the Chinese dragon)

In England

An inflated Satan

Or was it Sua proper

Came to squat among

The letters

Then stroke by stroke, again

It rose right

Upon

Each slate of white

Mind

The Mouse, A Mouse

if the little mouse became

as boundless as the sky as it wishes

the sky would become

as free as a cloud

the cloud

as powerful as a wind

and if the wind became

as unshakable as a wall

the wall would become

as penetrating as a mouse

and the little mouse

a mouse

Wordscaping

Immigration

To escape from the tyrannical logic

Of your mother tongue

You wandered, wandering

Through earth’s length and breadth

Subjecting your old self to another syntax

A whole set of grammatical rules

Strangely new to your lips and tips

To expand the map of your mind

Far beyond your home and haven

Yet in the meantime it becomes colonized

By all the puzzling paradoxes

Of this chosen language, for example:

Quicksand can be very slow

Boxing rings are in fact square

And a guinea pig is neither a pig

Nor is it from Guinea

Like you or me

Yellow Comedy

Using my yellow tail

I yellow-swam

From the Yellow River

As a yeast of the yellow peril

Against the yellow alert

In yellow journalism

With a yellow hammer

And a yellow sheet

I yielded to the yellow metal

At a yellow spot

¼ million yards away from Yellowknife

People call me yellow jack

Some hailed me as a yellow dog

When I yelped on my yellow legs

To flee from the yellow flu

Speaking Yerkish* like a yellow warbler

I have composed many yellow pages

For a yeasty yellow book

To be published by the yellow press

Don’t panic, I yell low.

* An artificial language developed for experimental communication between humans and chimpanzees.

Sell Liberation of Words’ Worth

Although with a broken pen soul

I am not writing tear ably or pointlessly

on the new clear issue for the magazine

run by a non-prophet society

set up on the basis of its members’ lie ability

To me, an operation would not secure but mean

a sentence to the peace in that infected area

As a banana author, I may lack a peel

but it is rarely better to turn left than to be all right

To avoid a rest, I’ve de sided to go fast on a weak day

then I will call my sun to rice in the mourning

after he falls in love at the first site

In deed, if we give the act an inch

it would become a ruler. Just like a life guard

I hope to keep all the buoys in line

With a film-like memory yet to be developed

I try to keep my head above the water

as I swim for word, yet I have no interest in the bank

Unlike a lawyer who may be debarred or a model

to be deposed, I’ll never become a poet to be decomposed

nor do I allow my train of thaw derailed; rather

I will commit sue side by continuing

to write worse or move in verse

Word Collage: A Politically Correct Poem

According to a poll conducted worldwide in 2008, these are the 50 “most beautiful English words.”

Mother of Passion, Smile

In love for eternality and fantastic destiny

At freedom or liberty

With tranquility or peace

In blossoms and sunshine

On the sweetheart gorgeous

To cherish enthusiasm, hope and grace

Under rainbow blue

Like sunflowers twinkling in serendipity

With bliss and lullabies

Beyond the sophisticated renaissance, cute and cozy

Under butterflies from the galaxy

At this hilarious moment beyond extravaganza

Against aqua sentiment

In a cosmopolitan bubble

Above pumpkins, bananas and lollipops

As bumblebees giggle

About paradoxes and delicacies

Despite the peek-a-boo behind an umbrella

Beside a kangaroo

Word Vogue: Another Politically Correct Poem

According to Global Language Monitoring (2009), the following words have appeared most frequently on flat and e/media over the past decade.

Global warming, with

9/11, before

Obama, through

Bailout, for

Evacuees, from

Derivatives, via

Google, behind

Surge, against

Chinglish, till

Tsunami

In No Sense, In A Sense

You are

in ascent;

I am to have

inner scent;

She is already

in a cent;

Aren’t we all

innocent?

Light vs Shadow

Was it the shadow?

Was it the shadow beyond?

Was it the shadow beyond the shadow?

Still fell the thick night,

When the heart blocked the light.

Yes, it is light!

It is light within!

It is light within light!

Loud sweeps the morning glow,

Where the mind has no shadow.

An Apocrypha of A

As the first born to the Semitic family

A was originally a picture of an alef or ox, the

Agricultural energy that was rotated twice until

Alpha loomed up in the Greek psychoscape even before

Adam became the chosen father of all Europeans close to

Athens, where Apollo had acupunctured wisdom and knowledge into

Aristotle, the intellectual ancestor of modern man, who inspired

Alexander to make the first effort of globalization, which did not reach East

Asia, the land of Ah Q’s, the largest hotel for

All travelers until centuries later, but it is

Atomic bombs that will blow up all our pasts and send us through

America to a higher civilization, where the drop of an

Apple is to enable us to fly to the other side of the universe

Along the cosmic string as

Africa, the heart of human darkness

Awaits for Buddha, Jesus, Allah or

An other unknown author to come and rotate for the third time

A scarlet letter of

Spelling Test

Happy

Happy is the baby who picks and plays with a plain bottle among all the fancy toys

Happy

Successful

The dog is successful when it finds the bone it wants to chew

Successful

Love

If we love animals, they will love plants in return

Love

Peace

When mice begin to enjoy playing with cats, there will be peace

Peace

Healthy

Children are healthy as long as they are eating, running and giggling

Healthy

The Banishment of First Person Singular

always capitalized

seldom in lower case

the only pro-form of my entire being

coded in my chosen language

impressive indeed

pronounced with a sole loud vowel

spelt in a powerful personal letter

without differentiating the sex

or even an actual human antecedent

unavoidable and irremovable

you are equally assumed in a sentence

either by a murmuring illiterate voice

or by a widely published phd pen

alas, if only the syntax could

hide or spare my humble self

sometimes

Etymology of Love

It is perfectly easy:

All you need to do is

To separate ‘be’

From the intended act

Or take out the first letter

From the ‘glove’

[on your personality]

or simply press

and thus cover

the ‘g’ [spot with

Your whole being

Bare]

Dangling Modifiers

to write your dead past

into a living essay

this chapter should be read

with your eyes and mind

both widely open

by perusing or pursuing

such perfectly bound books

all the essential rules

can easily be learned

about their sophisticated syntaxes

taking notes with all her attention

the idiomatic usages

of her adopting language

will be mastered well

over a small spot of time

heavily loaded with grammar

his whole being is

an isolated adverbial

often meant to modify

the wrong logical subject

Another Impasse

Writing from Vancouver West

To my former friends in China

I always feel hesitant

Whether to or not to use

The first person singular pronoun

As in ‘I do not really think so!’

Time and time again, they have

Unnecessarily reminded me of

The biggest difference in language

Between the east and the west:

“There in English you always

Spell your favourite word ‘I’

In big bold italic upper case, however

Here we have really rarely

Employed the word even in poetry”

In their writing practice (probably too long)

They either drop the pronoun or replace it

With many an impersonal thing like:

The present writer, the writing subject

The unlearned, the uncouth one

The old person/body, the little human/one

The trivial/insignificant/unmentionable

The president/manager/[ ] proper

The person per se, or more precisely:

[Your] inferior, [your] subordinate

[Your] stupid husband/brother/son

[Your] foolish wife/sister/daughter

[Your] humble [ ], or less humbly:

As [your] father/mentor/lord…

Instead of standing up for an unmasked person

‘I’ should try to remain hidden like a taboo

In Chinese

Still Life

Blue blue, gray gray, green green

Fair fair, square square, light light

On a Rainy Day

You open, I

Close, or I

Open, you

Close, either

Your umbrella

Or mine

To keep

Both ourselves

Dry from

This cold

Rain, we

Have to

The one

And the same

Umbrella, if

We must

Walk

Hand in hand

Behest Impressed

from a messed nest to a jest fest

with a blessed crest and a dressed breast

the pressed guest had best detest

molest or invest in a west quest

for the chest of zest

in the assessed protest

against the test of pest

lest the rest vest

in the depressed or accessed

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

hubble-bubble, hocus-pocus

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?

The Cosmic Music

With your heart’s ear can you clearly hear

The sound from an unknown planet far beyond our galaxy

A few tender grasses whose deafening snoring has awakened a whole new world

Where the souls of our relatives are traveling all in a hurry

As if to attend a spring gathering?

The Way Forward

Tick, ticktack, ticktock

A cloudy sound persists around

Looming lonely in the lightless park

Waiting, wandering or hesitating

As so many of us have ceased

Groping our ways out of dark

Hey, no more path appears ahead

Someone kindly reminds the blind man

Thanks, but your warning is really off the mark

Tick, ticktack, ticktock

His seeing rod rhyming with the unseen clock

Behind his faded footsteps follows a fresh path

Chanson of a Chinaman*

ching chong, coolie

chink, shina, chonky

so was i called a dragon of barbarity

a born rogue holding laws of truth in deformity

because i ate rats, dogs, slugs and snakes

i began with anything but genes of true humanity

ching chong, coolie

chink, shina, chonky

so am i made a dead enemy of civility

a growing grotesque against the white reality

because i hate freedom as much as human rights

though i have the right to remain a human entity

ching chong, coolie

chink, shina, chonky

so will i be seen a species of non-conformity

a satan inflated beyond the borders of christianity

as long as i’m pig-eyed, crow-haired, the farthest other

i must be treated as a real demon only

* A parody on ‘A Chanson for Canton,’ published in Punch (London: April 10, 1858), which offers a telling historical example illustrative of the deeply-rooted and long-held western tendency to demonize China as the farthest Other.
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

Lexical Tourism

(after Bill Holm’s ‘The Icelandic Language’)

You do not speak that language

Neither have you been to their country

But within the territory of our English vocabulary

You can easily find who they are:

They enjoy playing mahjong in a casino

They are afraid of typhoon

They kowtow to show their respect

They fight with kungfu skills

They believe in fengshui

And now they have their own taikongnauts

From these lexical spots

Can you clearly sightsee how they live?

Media Warning

you have the right to remain silent

any sound you make here in public

can and will later or sooner be used

against you in a court of rule

even if it is nothing but a cough

a sneeze, a hiccup, or a fart

they are either clichés or noises

you also have the right to talk nonsense

any utterance you make in private

can and will be translated against you

according to the dictionary of democracy

your facial expression, your gesture

you body movement or your posture

may prove far from politically correct

you sure have the right to remain silent

unless your whole being is a word per se

Provincial Proverbs

An onion a day keeps the salesperson away

A grin a minute keeps the oak in spirit

A lie an hour keeps the chief in power

A wind a night keeps the mind light

A poem a week keeps the heart freak

A payroll a month keeps poverty at arm’s length

A trip a season keeps the dog in reason

A boss a year keeps the worker dear

A wedding a decade keeps the couple off headache

A big bang a century keeps the human world friendly

Sexual Slogans

A steak a day keeps the court away

A touch a minute keeps the body in spirit

A lie an hour keeps the chief in power

An injection a night keeps the mind light

A dinner a week keeps the heart freak

A honeymoon a month keeps the government at arm’s length

A trip a season keeps the dog in reason

A chef a year keeps the house dear

A wedding a decade keeps the couple off headache

The Black Bird

so little triggers

off

a black bird

the spot of synthesis

foiled with snow

light

to fly into the thick dictionary of

gray

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

Reading behind the Words

Behind the words is there no meaning squatting

Except a bold row of cheerful cherry trees

Standing tall in front of my half-fenced house

That bloom for two weeks in a year only

Between spring and summer

Behind the words is there no emotion hidden

But a pair of little unsung yellow birds

Popping up from nowhere

One has flown far away from home

The other still learning to fly close to the nest

Behind the words is there no metaphor explored

But a black and white photo of my parents

Who are hospitalized alternately in China

For the imbalance between yin and yang

A disease both blood-related

Politics vs Poetics

in a busy simile-like street

with masks of synecdoche and metonymy

so many metaphors are dancing wildly

that no oxymoron can elbow his way

through crowds of symbols and hyperboles

to his long lost friend paradox

trying to converse with a shy-looking allusion

after standing too long on tiptoes

between consonance and assonance

i become an internally-rhymed road plate

pointing towards the shiny euphony

with no onomatopoeia painted on my face

hardly visible beside the fast lane

Table of Contents

Landscaping

1. Seasonscape

2. Beyond the Blue

3. Sun Setting above the Sea

4. Ritual

5. Sea View

6. Nightscape

7. Spring Scenery

8. Tree and Flower

9. Crow in the Sunlight

10. Mushroom

11. Summer Scenery

12. At Sunrise in Summer

13. Corn

14. Sunflower

15. Autumn Scenery

16. Stream Moonset in Autumn

17. Pumpkins

18. Dandelion

19. In the Twilight

20. Sorghum

21. Poppies

22. Winter Scenery: The Black Bird

23. Winter Sleep

24. Wintry Willow

25. Ode to Huyang Tree

26. At Zhangjiajie, A UNESCO Designated Nature Park

27. Sightseeing at the Harrison Lake

28. Confucian Gentility: Floral Haiku

29. Animal Virtue

30. The Cycle of a Life

Mindscaping

1. Directory of Directions

2. My Crow

3. South China Cicada

4. Bow and Arrow

5. Fossil Fish

6. My Crow, My Other Life

7. Name Changing

8. Dancing with Crane

9. Sowing after ‘Digging’

10. Ischemia

11. Me and Them

12. Single Last Sale

13. Day & Night

14. Uncertainty

15. Light vs Shadow

16. Butterfly Being: Zhuangzi Revisited

17. Replacing

18. White Calls

19. The Worn Worm

20. Chronometry

21. Wintry Vision

22. The Crow and the Butterfly

23. Chameleon

24. The Unseen

25. Secret Spirit

26. If U Can’t See Me, I Can’t See U

27. Drawing the Dragon

28. The Mouse, A Mouse

29. Like Birds, Like Humans

30. Within This Open Bottle

Wordscaping

1. Immigration

2. Yellow Comedy

3. Sell Liberation of Word’s Worth

4. Word Collage

5. Word Vogue

6. In No Sense, in a Sense

7. Light vs Shadow

8. An Apocrypha of A

9. Spelling Test

10. The Banishment of First Person Singular

11. Etymology of Love

12. Dangling Modifier

13. Another Impasse

14. Still Life

15. On a Rainy Day

16. Behest Impressed

17. Collage of Voices

18. The Cosmic Music

19. The Way Forward

20. Chanson of a Chinaman

21. Fragile, Archaic China

22. Lexical Tourism

23. Media Warning

24. Provincial Proverbs

25. Sexual Slogans

26. The Black Bird

27. Awaiting

28. Reading behind the Words

29. English Irrationalities

30. Politics vs Poetics

yuanspoetry©

Monday, 17 November 2014

PP Press: CREATE ABUNDANCE to appear

Tuesday, 4 November 2014

updates:changming's 'mindscaping' released

[archived]: Trioscape by Yuan Changming Yuan ©

Trioscaping

Changming Yuan

Landscaping

Nightscape