2016, 12, 14 [wed]
Caging
Within
the outer cage
Of our
connections
With the pasts is
Another
cage of those
With
the futures, and right
At the heart is the core
Cage
of all our relations
With
other humans
In
today’s world. That’s
Where
your soul is kept
Like
a grotesque crow
Modern
Jewish Theologies
Marx’s
historical materialism proves
There
was no god in time to begin with
Einstein’s principle of relativity illustrates
There
is no supernatural being in space
Whereas Freudian psychology reveals
There
is no holy existence in the mind
Except desires of, by or for the people, and
Desires alone, that are the real motive force
In
the making of world history, as Mao says
Holy
Sound
Every
Chinese character has one
Or
more homonyms, except fo for
Buddha,
which structurally means
Non-human,
and sen for Buddhist
Implying
he is no longer a human
Both
simply to give the philosopher and
His
followers a holy significance. Unlike
God
or Allah, neither of the two words has
A
homonym, but each is unique in sound
(And
spelling) as in English. So, to
Be
holy is to be unique in sound (or
Perhaps
to be original in voice?)
Such
being the case, whoever can speak or
Sing
in a unique way is a god in Chinese?
The
Worshipping of Nouns
No,
no, it’s not nominalism of any kind
In
the English sense of the word, but
A long-held
tradition of worshipping
Nouns
ever since Confucius said if the name
Is
not proper, the speech will not go right
Yes, humanity,
justice, etiquette, wisdom
Faith, then loyalty,
filial piety, chastity
Righteousness …like a
barbaric atheist
We
believe in each and every one of such
Holy
nouns, though we seldom practice them
As
they uphold democracy, freedom, equality
Independence,
fraternity, and human rights
However,
this does not mean we all
Worship
nouns only for nouns’ sake
Westernization
of Chinese Civilization
First,
the basic words we used to speak
Or think
in our mother tongue have
Now
become multi-syllabled rather
Than
single-syllabled in the past
Then,
we read and write from left to right
Instead
of the other way around, and
More
important, we depend far more
On
passive voice and conjunctions in syntax
Than
ever in history, among other things
In
addition, we now wear suits other than gowns
We
cut hair rather than keep it in a pigtail
So,
what else shall we change to embrace
Modernization
or Americanization?
Social
Dynamics
It
is not the season or environmental condition
But
the consciousness that has made flowers
Bloom,
trees grow, or birds fly
It
is not people, but their desires that have been
Driving
civilization forward to heaven or hell
In
the Fraser Valley Park
As
dusk sags onto the landscape
All
dogs and their owners
Return
to the comfort and warmth
Of
their houses after a happy walk
Except
fallen leaves rolling towards
Big
corners, where lonely homeless
Humans
are left behind, getting ready
To
spend just another cold night
They
have no human masters, but are
Always
leashed with a rope of poverty
Contrast
Rotting
behind vermillion gates are
Wasted
wine and meat, Du Fu chanted
Long
ago, while human bodies are frozen
To
death by the roadside. This gap
Between
human beings have always
Existed,
widening daily since before the
Poet’s
time until today it’s getting even
Wider
than between two smallest stars
Rotting
now are not the wine and meat only
But
also the heart and soul, while frozen
To
death are both human bodies and hopes
Contingency
You
can certainly put your mind (or soul)
Into
a gold Maytag, but first you’d better
Empty
the pockets, since coins or keys
Left
in them might damage the machine
You
can certainly wash it really clean if
You
use warm water, the right detergent and
Wash
it twice, or even three times. As for the
Stains,
there are all kinds of powerful agents
You
can certainly dry it in a machine or
Better
to hang it outside on a clear day
Let
the sunshine do the job, let nature
Take
care of it before you put it on again
What
Else Can You Do beside Jiujie?
You
cut meat with sharp knives
We
poke grasses with bamboo sticks
You punch others with hard fists
We
dance around you with taichi gestures
Your
men fuck around everywhere outside your households
Our
women lay babies right in your living rooms
You colonize every city with an
English syntax
We decorate
each street with Chinese signboards
You
deploy aircraft carriers near our waters and coasts
We
marry girls to your princes and paupers
You
enjoy setting fires and blowing winds along our long walls
We have Chinese stomachs to digest all
insults and injuries
You
try every way to overthrow our government
We
sell every artifact to help your people survive
You borrow money from us to build
more weapons
We
work hard to make more money for your banks
For
a Life in Virtual Reality
How
many times have you wanted to thank God
For
all that’s turned out but a bad dream?
How
many times have you wished it all to be
Nothing
more or less than a nightmare? And
How
many times have you counted the times
When
you feel lost between dream and reality?
2016, 11, 05 [sat]
Sidewalk Tree
Standing by the side of the road
You never budge, but
Keep waving your hands
Your thoughts and feelings
As if greeting
Someone, something
Like the human in Beckett’s play
You devote a whole lifetime
Waiting for Godot
Who will never show up
On your stage
Pumpkin
Right at the foreground of the season
In an abbot’s kasaya
You sit there
As if praying for the whole land
In an unheard voice
Water
From the lowest spots
On earth, you rise
Rising with the sun
Above the ground
Above the houses and trees
Above the horizon
Above the human vision
Until you reach high in the morning sky
Where you fly invisibly
With all the freedom
You can find
In the universe
First Smoking
Well before my voice broke
I smoked my first cigarette
(Made of bits collected in an open
Movie house), not on the ground
But in a tree so nobody, especially
My tyrannical father, could see me
“Learning bad.” The taste was really awful
But blowing out clouds from my narrow
Throat above moving human heads
Made me feel like the Monkey King
Travelling on his journey to the west
Instead of making a hundred thousand kilometer
somersault
I looked afar, farther beyond the sky
Until I gave up smoking for poetry writing
That’s when I began to miss the misty connection
Between my little clouds and my late father
Noises vs Music
All manmade sounds are noises
Except the few notes gushing out
From an unpolluted heart, as pleasant
As the melodious songs of
Birds, winds, rain and thunder
The difference between music and noise
Lies thus in the way a human soul
Or heart dances on an instrument
But what about the human voice
Which produces both songs and noises?
The Child as the Father of Man: for My Grandson
First time I played
Beethoven’s no 5 to my
Grand baby son, it was
Greatly disturbed, but i
Had no idea if it was by
The music or by its own fate
Fearing it might not like
The sound of door knocking
I have since tried
To imitate the effect
In a softer way:
To several lines of poetry
Or as many bird chirrups
I exposed its little
Heart and soul
Just as I did its father
Swinging
Push. Up
there you saw
The horizon above your childhood
As wide as your vision
Pull. You
faced backwards
Close to the playground with
Footprints messy on the sand
Push again. Higher
up you hope
To fly like a kite with a
String held in a human hand
Pull again. Your
mind became
Confused as if everything could
Be withdrawn beneath your body
The Painting
What a reservoir of lost beauty
Framed within the dikes of time
Ready to overflow
When there is another storm
Asgardia: Second Choice
Last time I was not chosen
This time I have selected myself
To join the mass long march
Towards Asgardia, though
Without a Morse as our leader
I know I cannot go to heaven
But I can flee from hell
Epitaph
Just as long epitaphs may contain short lives
So short ones may contain long lifetimes
Some contain a high-sounding biography
Some only hardened dates
Besides a name or
Even no name like Wu Zetian’s
You have none, except
A y-shaped ventifact
Helen’s Heart
Such a wild dog you have adopted
Taking as much care as any other human
Can do the job under a
house roof
But each time you open the door
And walk it in fraser river valley park
It would run far away from you
Sometimes in your front (or back)
For a rolling leaf, other times away
In your left (or right) for a ball’s shadow
So often does it refuse to return to you
Despite your persistent call as it
Enjoys playing with another pet
Last month, it was lost, maybe forever
Like the real economy never going
Together with the stock market
Brief Bio of a Leaf
Whitening to recall a snowy day
Greening to promote spring
Yellowing to store summer sunlight
Oranging to reflect a morning glow
Reddening to catch the smile of a setting sun
Purpling to flirt with evening winds
Blackening to return to the root at night
A full spectrum of the sunlight
A full spectrum of the season
Celebrating Shortness
Life is so short
Nabokov explains
Our existence is
But a brief crack of
Light between two
Eternities of darkness
Or in Su Dongpo’s words
Is a white foal fleeting
Across a narrow gap
Indeed, brevity is the
Soul of English, and
Everything else, so
Let’s cut it short
And even shorter
To make life long
Longer than art
The Unidentified Crow
In its beak it carries a long lost prophecy
So ominously heavy it cannot fly high
Or afar, but keep flapping its broken
Wings against the fog, where the bird
Fears to drop the message on a snag
A car roof rather than a human head
If it falls on a wild field, it can never
Grow into a copse; if on a tower
It will not be seen by any open eyes
Becoming too tired to fly, how much
Longer can the spirit of darkness keep
The secret in its short beak?
The Evolution of Inner Being
Before learning to think in language
We had emotions and imaginings
Running wild within the skinny boundaries
Of our inner space, where they lived
And became extinct like dinosaurs
While some of them have gone into
The land of history as fossils, others
Have evolved into birds flying
High and afar until they are caught
In the net of a mother tongue
Top Ten Happiest Moments
The birth of a first child
The making of a child
The birth of a first grand child
The conceiving of a first grand child
The first kiss of two lovers
The first wedding, and
The loudest fart
The largest pool
2016,10,13 [Thursday]
Hook
Just how, you were thrown into the water
Under the current and close to a snag
You can’t feel the sun light
Without being reflected
When a fish swims by here
You run into a nasty urchin, tantalizing
As we are all being tantalized
For a tiny catch
South Vancouver
Each evening you walk backwards around
The block on Cornish street, supposedly
As an exercise for your back; in so doing
You sometimes recall Du Dongpo, and how
He would oppose the trend, ignoring it
By resorting to brush painting, calligraphy
Besides writing poetry at an outpost on Lingnan
When he was exiled by the imperial court
(Or the other way around), inventing ways
To cook pork, joking about a Buddhist Master’s
Donkey face as long as the sidewalk behind you
Other times you look up into the deep blue
What you are withdrawing from is a close up
A panorama of your future as the past while
You constantly have to turn back, just to avoid
Posing a hazard to other normal pedestrians
Tender Was Once the Night
How fondly you often miss, recollecting
The shredded darkness of a primitive night
Like your native village (or first love)
So pure-hearted, full of natural charm
Without being disturbed by wood fire
Candle light, let alone electric shine
When fireflies had fan above
The thick bushes, where primroses
Bloomed towards a meditating owl
O for an unpolluted night! And let trees
And flowers have a sound sleep
La Lutte Finale Or Last Trial
All rise [les
damnés de la terre?]
Oyez, Oyez, Oyez
With neither jury nor audience
Who is to win man’s case
Nature or God? [ L'Internationale
Sera le genre humain!]
Falling
Further and further
Down, my body keeps
Falling, except for a single line
From my consciousness that has caught
A snag against the cliff, ready to break
Like a spider’s wire
Over stretched along my fear
In the warmth and comfort of
My hard-floored bed, I am
Falling down, further and further
To a bottomless inner being
Art of Autumn
Rather than the foil
Of spring flowers
All leaves of the passing season
Are now blooming aloud
Towards the autumn sky
Less tender textured, perhaps
But more brittle, more deadly brilliant
Shaken off for a last ritual dance
With the wind before they kiss
The land once and forever
Resurrecting
The rebirth of a phoenix
Is a legend, popular but misleading
Whereas the rebirth of
An ageing eagle is a reality
Hidden somewhere as he retreats
Into a cliff corner, there plucking his
Own feathers one by one, then
Sharpening his beak
Until he is ready, again
To fly high in the same sky
For another lifetime
The Happiness
Of life
Lies in the cocktail of
One per cent of pleasure
Mixed with
99% of suffering
Melancholy and boredom
All in a single cup to sip
Rebirth
The finer, or the smaller pieces
You break your inner being into
The better chances you have
To reform it into a new selfhood
Drafting the Declaration of Dependence
No
Men
Are
Created
Equal
But
Everyone
Tries
To
Live
As such
Baby
Shower: For Kate and Emma*
Bamboo
nature premium baby diapers [from an aunt
The
daughter is the art of freedom
Love
to dream swaddle UP lite [from an uncle
Every
princess is a girl, but not every queen
My
Best frind pillow from [Uncle Sam
To be
or not to be a single flower
Grey
dahlia nursing cover [from Grandparents
If you
want a woman, have something done
Dr.
Brown’s bottle warmer [from Aunt Angel
Women,
thy name is frailty
Tammee
tippee electric steam sterilizer [from Uncle Chase
Only
women are easy to get along with, Confucius hoped
Stork
craft custom hoop glider and ottoman [from Grandpa Michael
One of
the two running rabbits must be female, according to Mulan
Infant
optics dxr-8 video baby monitor [from Grandma Helen
Flowers,
why not bloom all together right now? asked Empress Wu
Ju-ju-be
b.f.f.convertible diaper bag [from uncle Allen, etc., etc.
Never
to be a basic bitch, but blahblahblah, blahblahblah
* Our first grandchild Kate is expected to come to this world on
november 11, 2016.
Drowning
It’s like a snag
Being pushed towards me
By an indifferent wave
While struggling in the water
I flapped my arms high
Only to see it drifting around
About a yard away
Sitting on the snag is a wounded crow
With eyes widely open
As if to appreciate my last dance
Like a thought, sinking slowly
To the bottom of my being
Some Kites Never Fly
There was a wind blowing the other day
Neither too hard nor too swiftly
And the kite had no better wings
In addition to a gracious shape
But the couple just couldn’t fly it up
No matter how they tried
Running against the wind, or pulling
The string with sweeping hope
Obviously, they did not know
Some kites never fly to the blue sky
Even with or against the right season
Even in this Fraser River Valley Park
In the Parallel Universe
In the parallel universe there are no
Black holes within black holes
But another you do live like your soul
It has no need for a mate
Nor does it depend on food or clothing
For survival, even has no idea about
God or ghost, fame or power, health
Or wealth. Like a thought itself, it is
A spot of consciousness full of spirits
Ready to shine with stars, to shoot
Against space, to spread with time
Like your inner being, in another world
No Medusa
Ignoring a name call during the return is like
Ignoring a flirtation from Fox Spirit in Pu
Songling’s tales is like
Ignoring the chase of a Frankenstein is like
Ignoring the whim of a Faust is like
Ignoring the challenge of a Pushkin for a duel is
like
Ignoring the declaration from a George Bush is
like
Ignoring the request from a Revenue Canada is
like
Ignoring the invitation from a University of
Saskatchewan is like
Ignoring the rejection from a New Yorker is like
Ignoring the ignorance by a Helen is like
Ignoring the notice from a Vancouver Library is
like
Ignoring the judgment from a being above
Dao Philosophizing
To/To
Seek/Balance
Yang/Yin
From/With
Yin/Yang
Is/Isn’t
The
same/The same
As/As
To/To
Seek/Balance
Yin/Yang
From/With
Yang/Yin
Before/Unless
We/You
Zigzag/Zagzig
Our
path/Your Way
With/Without
A
thought/Any feeling
About/Towards
Nature/God
Here/There
Daoist Pursuit
To/To
Seek/Balance
Yang/Yin
From/With
Yin/Yang
Is/Isn’t
The same/The same
As/As
To/To
Seek/Balance
Yin/Yang
From/With
Yang/Yin
Before/Unless
We/You
Zigzag/Zagzig
Our
Path/Your Way
With/Without
A
thought/Any feeling
About/Towards
Nature/God
Changing
Can’t you de-louse a rat?
Doesn’t matter. Neither can I
But we can untie our own hairstyle
Putting a little makeup if we want to
Or going for some plastic surgery
Better to cut off our whiskers
Or tails, biting pebbles
Instead of cloth or wood
Even to replace our hearts
With a cat’s
Listening to the Mountain Murmuring
Twenty minimeters of pink petals.
Twenty minimetres of stretch and reach
Floral
foil, twenty minimeters
Of
soil, grass, dew, bush
Sitting in green meditation about
The
balance between yin and yang
Myriad of leaves,
Falling
down with mists
Of
last night approaching – twenty minimeters
Of ethereal presence, kissing
The
thick ridges – is the soul
The
melody of equanimity?
Insects sloughing off
In chameleon-rhythms.
You
stopped as you heard them
Twenty minimeters of dandelions rolling against
The
vastness of sky and mountain
Getting Ready: for Liu Yu
Lastly, remember to burn this box with me, Son
It contains all my most precious pictures,
letters
Certificates, awards, notebooks, manuscripts
Which do not sell anyway. As for my clothing
And furniture, I have donated them all shortly
after
Your dad was gone. Help me to mop the floor and
The dusty versions of my pasts, sunbathe my
quilts
As well as the one extra set of clothes which
have
Covered my inner and outer being for the last
ten
Years. Now I finally have everyone to think of
In light of light that illuminates the darkest
composite of
My consciousness. The departure is due soon, and
I am
Fully prepared to set off on this final trip. As
you know
I really hated it when we threw all your
father’s
Belongings, soft or hard, away as garbage the
other day
The Way to Epiphany
With a storm
With a gull
With your breath
Goes the thought
With a vague vision
Beyond the bogland
With your heart
Hawking aloud in the wild
With dripping blood
An unformed concept
A shoal of consciousness
Bubbling with feeling
With a photon
With a quantum
With your mind concentrated
On a twisted other
Once Picking up a Powerful Country
This Little Poem of Mine Goes Right
Only recently did I become alert to how
I resemble uncle Sam. They – it? – don’t
Like China. I don’t like China either
(Though not for the same reasons.) They try
To reap cash in all prospering economies; I
Try to gather every penny from the corner
Wherever I can see and lay my humble hands
They hold high their banners of democracy
And human rights; I like my rights and detest
Dictatorship (though perhaps for different
Purposes.) In particular, they enjoy bullying
The weak, dodging the strong, disturbing
Waters to fish and using dirty tricks to keep
All others down; I am ready to say foul words
To do whatever possible to rise above myself
In this harshest human condition, although I
Was not born to be a villain. The only
difference
Lies in the degree to which I am selfish,
villainous
Hypercritic, and they--it? -- are way more so
As Plants Grow around Us
As more plants grow around us, they will
Show what we cannot show ourselves
A blade of grass that has been trodden many
Times still continues to hold a dew at dawn
A Huyang tree manages to stand long after it
dies
And never gets rotten even longer after its fall
A Beijing willow is always ready to bend in
grace
To hold winds with its arms, despite its naked
scars
A rotten snag with a new twig
Growing against all the broken rings
Line Pieces in a Class Room
- Mathematics
The shortest distance from
Or to any point, whether it is
Measurable or not
- Physics
How afar from one another
The other quantum will be dancing
In the same way as the untwisted one
- Semiotics
If a solid line stands for yang [penis]
And a broken one for yin [vagina], can we
Have a dotted line for a hermaphrodite in bagua?
- Sociology
Related or not
Like father like son, or
Unlike daughter, unlike mother
- Genetics
Only the female can carry on the genes
Of a female ancestor; that’s why only God
Became the father of man
- Poetry
If ever I had a single line
Left unwritten, it will be
Composes in my entire next life
