Wednesday 22 December 2021

yuan's lit updates - 22dec

1/. got 31 acceptances in october, 16 in august, and 14 in december, among which 42 were from new magazines for the first time, including Denver Qtrly, Poetry Hall and Dreich. Added to the list of countries where i have poetry published is kazakhstan: as of today, i have had poetry accepted or forthcoming in more than 2000 literary outlets, across 48 countries; 

 2/. On nov 20, Pink Plastic House, a new us-based online magazine informed me that they had nominated my poem 'features: for helen hengxiang liao' for the 2021 pushcart prize https://kristingarth.com/pink-plastic-house-a-tiny-journal/the-haunted-dollhouse/haunted-dollhouse-season-2/features-by-yuan-changming/. this is my 12th time nomination for the honor; 

 3/ On 20 december, Malahat Review, one of the most prestigous literary magazine based in canada, told me that they had nominated 3 of my 'bilinguacultural poems' for cananda's 45th national magazine awards (poetry category). the three pieces were originally published in issue 216 of the magazine, which recently published an interview with me on its website (link: http://www.malahatreview.ca/interviews/yuan_interview.html) 

 4/. beginning from today, i will start to retreat from all outreaching activities for a period of time. by way of this self-imposed 'hiatus' or confinement, i can concentrate better on some of my most private pursuits. this self-confinement has been long-overdue.. now is high time, since i have published all the important writings thus far (in case i should fail to survive the pandemic). here are the links:: 
 - LIMERENCE (Vanncouver: Poetry Pacific, 2021). https://www.amazon.com/Limerence-yuan-changming/dp/B0991CGXLJ - (R)e.volution (LA: Wapshott, 2021). https://www.amazon.com/R-volution-Poetrylandia-6-ebook/dp/B08XQ5RRSS
 - 《袁昌明詩選》(Selected Poems of Yuan Changming) (温哥华太平洋诗歌出版社,2021年)。 https://www.amazon.com/%E8%A2%81%E6%98%8C%E6%98%8E%E8%A9%A9%E9%81%B8-Traditional-Chinese-%E8%A2%81-%E6%98%8C%E6%98%8E-ebook/dp/B092TRSGXM 
- 《憂 華 集》(My Chinese Concerns) (温哥华太平洋诗歌出版社,2021年). https://www.amazon.ca/%E6%86%82%E8%8F%AF%E9%9B%86-Traditional-Chinese-%E8%A2%81-%E6%98%8C%E6%98%8E-ebook/dp/B09348KQG5 
- 《致初恋:一个知青的海外生涯》(Letters to My First Love)(温哥华太平洋诗歌出版社,2021年) https://www.amazon.com/%E8%87%B4%E5%88%9D%E6%88%80-%E4%B8%80%E5%80%8B%E7%9F%A5%E9%9D%92%E7%9A%84%E6%B5%B7%E5%A4%96%E7%94%9F%E6%B6%AF-Traditional-Chinese-%E6%98%8C%E6%98%8E-ebook/dp/B09BLSWF5C

Tuesday 5 October 2021

[archived poems by yuan: 2019-1©]


2019, 6, 24 Monday


Inner Gardening

Dig the bottom of
Your heart well, turn it
    Into a flowerbed, &
You could grow plenty roses
Even for every passer-by, while keeping
Your front yard
Full of spring fragrance
Year round & round


Interphysical Insights: Air Conditioner

Dismantle all
        The inner & outer
Air conditioners
In your residence, &
Your body (as well as your heart)
Will naturally become
More adaptable
To a much wider range of
Temperatures


Interphysical Insights: Subtracting

Better to remove the dirty
From your body (& heart)
Than to keep it free of
Foul odour by adding onto your skin
Patches of patches of perfume


Interphysical Insights (4): Power Spot

Close to the tall puti tree
Planted deep in my heart’s backyard
I kneel-sit still & strait, just to sunbathe
  My entire protobeing, where
It becomes fully charged
Inside out, with most powerful light


Interphysical Insights (5): Cleaning the Feel

Rather than a trash can
To dump to
From time to time, why not
        To have an incinaerator
To readily
Dispose any inner garbage you may have?


II (6): Self-Strengths

If only you could
Replace
Every ‘me and’
With ‘my’

You would become an ‘I’
Both much larger &
Stronger

II (7): On a Long Stormy Night

Keep hope burning, &
You will never lack
      Warmth or light
In your whole inner space


II (8): Alternative Living

Far beyond the feel
Is always a little unknown flower
Blooming fully into my senses

 π

let it
be the predetermined constant
in human algebra, or simply
happiness

(or wisdom?)

the ratio of a lifetime’s length L
to its spiritual growth S is then:

π = L/S

that is, if happiness is something fated, fixed
the more spiritual growth you attain
the longer you would live


Law of the Vital Few

40 percent of mundanity plus
40 percent of hardships makes 80 percent
        Of life, which is indeed composed of
One damned thing after another, all
Vs
Only 20 percent happiness of varying degrees

   So, every tiny bit of joy is worth
   As much as four times more
   Suffering in one way or another


Riddle

Deep in the heart
Of Lakoobama
Hides the dark spirit of an unknown bird
Like the leopard frozen in the snows
Of Kilimenjaro
Rather than the forged Voynich Manuscript

Whose text everyone understands
Yet none can decode the message



My Neighbour across the Street

    She spends all her visible time
Being exquisite in a history with no disturbance

Living alone in a quite old bungalow, she has
Few visitors year round, except perhaps
Her unseen relatives. Her voice never heard
Her movements always leisurely, walking in &
Out, mowing her slightly slanting lawn, taking
Meticulous care of her heathers & other
Tender plants. Sometimes dressed in a color
Like a bloated blue bell, or a shrunk grizzly
Sometimes wearing a high hat reminiscent of
An antelope. Our only communication for
The past decade has been her old black fit
Parked occasionally on our side of the street
(& our red civic almost touching her front yard)

Observing from my high window, I often cannot
Help wondering if she is a metamorphosed mice
In some lab, or myself in a segregated zoo


I Give up a Strong Desire

Long long have I longed

      To write (all my very superlatives
Into) a book, a masterpiece, hopefully
With every vivid descriptive detail, &
Sophisticated suspension, all designed
To work perfectly for a super sur-plot
In a unique inner-outer setting, both

As factual as fictional, as
Full of in-

Sights into the human nature as into
      My own protobeing

But alas, after nearly one thousand attempts
I finally decide to stop, mainly because of
My fear about failure to find a close reader
Other than myself

Because I know my writing never appeals
To any editor even in my mother tongue

Because

Indeed, to live my story is, after all
More urgent than to story my life


Longevity Tree

In my backyard I planted two trees
One is, hopefully, an evergreen poem
    The other my split soul
Both to outlive my blood & flesh

But neither ants nor squirrels seem to
Care about the metaphor leafed at the tip
Of every twig, or the message buried right
               Under the root


Mutation of Mankind

It’s taken us hundreds of thousands of years
To evolve from primitive chimpanzees
To sapiens, but as we intake plastic particles
With other biochemical compounds, inhale
Polluted air, implant chips or install artificial
Body parts, even inscribe our genetic maps
We are changing
   We have changed ourselves
In an infinitesimal fraction of history. Yes

We may still retain our human shape, but
Clothed inside, we are a new species
Much more (or less)
Than we used to be


The Fall & Rise of Man

Long after our fall from Eden
We are now, at last, rising again

From broken pieces
Of spirituality (through science

         Or knowledge again)
To a secular species

    An authentic animal kind
Living on our bodily desires only


0.618

Like the Confucian principle
Of the Golden Mean
The ideal (optimisation)
Times this magic number
      Yields the best
& most practical solution

Just a bit above the average
You can enjoy the benefits
Of all the possible best
While avoiding their pitfalls




Happy deathday to you







2019, 5, 22 Wednesday

Spring Agitating

The sprouts are rising, rising from beneath
As all seeds wake from their lost dreams
Each growing slowly with its naked heart

& body amidst freezing darkness, as light shoot
From all the nightmares towards the morning glow

Everything is rising, including their hibernated hope
Just feel it around you: the air is full of green spirits

& yet there is nothing, nobody able to prevent all
This rising with infinite vitality of the season


Briefly Noted

Tale about Two Species
A.I. Robot (Cloud).
Fancy yourself being a quantum.
What does a quantum do?
It entangles with another quantum in a parallel universe of course.
Why?
Who knows why.

It keeps entangling.

Until like a dying star it’s sucked into a black hole, &
All entanglements become de-tangled.
Since then, consciousness has formed one interstellar cloud after another.
Where you are the same entangling quantum entangled…


Sun Reality

Democritus says, nothing exists
Except atoms & the empty space
Everything else is opinion

But when this very opinion of his finally reaches us
Through the space of history, we will all have gone
With both atoms & the space
Except perhaps consciousness
Shimmering in a tiny corner of sky


Essence of Living

Wedged tightly
Between memory
(Of our pasts) &
Imagination
(About our futures)

We are living only
In this very present moment, when

All our cells & spirits are blooming in space


Raging against the Crow in the Park

Disguised as a pigeon, you’ve just had
Enough food
From my palm
(& heart); then, you flap high up
Beginning to circle above me, ready
    To flee away only after
Shitting on my head
& heart (again)


Epigraphs to Be Edited

1/ Having returned to dust
I still have my shadow
Dragging long behind

2/ Within the infinities of
Time and space, my soul
Is another micro-cosmos

3/ A stranger here to observe

4/ Ready to rise
Between yin & yang
Between 0 & 1
Between memory & imagination

5/ To be more or even
Less than a sapien
In my next life

1. off line
2. tuned out
3. game over
4. id expired
5. a static statistic
6. too tired to toil for more fame and money
7. here I have found freedom, equality and fraternity


Driving Force behind the Football

More freedom in time & space
Will insure a great success, for example
The railway allowing to travel
Farther, or the spotlight to see at night


Variations of the First Line in Anna Karenina

All handsome faces are alike; each
Ugly face is ugly in its own way

All winners of life are alike; each
Loser is lost in their own way

All human bodies are alike, each
Soul is intriguing in its own way


Personal Dilemma in 21st Century

With the most updated GPS
In my car, & a biggest tank overfilled with
Gas, I have no destination to go


Rebirth/Growth

I have been fighting against
All enemies in the first half
Of my life

Now is time to try to defeat my own
Self, my single last foe in the second


Meta-Trilogy of Man

                            Playing childhood at home
Growing in the wildness of the outer world, before
                                     Retuning to innerself

Multimillionaire

Starting from illiteracy
I have accumulated more than
Plenty of words
To buy
To spend, &
To donate
As many as I wish

Indeed, whoever dies rich
In words unused, dies disgraced


Again, Come & Go

As a vacuum at a corner
I work only about half an hour

It is an obscure role on the stage:
All the dust & bits of waste
Are eagerly swallowed up
From the floors
Except toys & fixtures

Yes, I could belly across
Every carpeted area, cobra up
Like a ballet dancer. I could
French-kiss the smallest mouth
& embrace the darkest corner
I could even sing at will &
At the top of my voice 

But as a vacuum
I can only take in the unwanted


Sur Bamakoola

You forget space bloated outside you
& not the other way around
Many situations it has sucked in
Brownish wetland behind the mind
Or amid cries of a morning infant
Also, stalking behind a wolf, chasing…

But hold – how about stop for a while
As feelings flee from the feel?





2019, 4, 25 Thursday

That

That that that that that-
Obsessed wordsmith uses
Repeatedly
Right in the first line is
In fact correct
Grammatically, but politically
   
Wrong
 Let alone poetically


Broadway.com

If ever at all, if only once
If you were
     To have such a chance

Just keep driving
    Drive forward
With no need to take a shoulder check

Despite so many beside you
Despite so much ahead & behind –

Along this new highway, your car
(Like your body or thought)
Will adapt its shape like a stream
Of water running its own course
From past to future, amidst
Programmed sapiens, through
The flow of data

Until at the meeting point
Between yin & yang
                      Between 0 & 1
Between time & space



Sonnet for a White Crow

In the backyard
Of my heart
To the other side
Of the world, the bird is ready to fly
Above its own two wings feathered
With hope

In the other side
Of the world
To the backyard
Of my heart, the bird is flying
With its own two wings feathered
Above hope

From pre-positions, it has finally flown away
Along the snowline to my deepest inner space


Most Hateful (That Is)

Wind blowing everything up, bothering
Every peaceful object, bugging each of
My skin cells & nerves though I hate
To be moved. It’s blatantly against my
Free will & consciousness, stirring up
My senses inside out, as

It kidnaps my protobeing & throws me
Into a corner like yesterday’s newspaper
Where with all the headlines, I am forced to join

The waste of daily life, exactly when
I wish to stand aside still
Like a tree, just to observe how it blows


Ideogramic Compounds: Learning Chinese Characters

思: thought takes place
      In the field of heart

闷: depressed when your heart is
      Shut behind a door

臭: stinking if you are overly
              Self-big

忍:tolerate with a knife
      Right above your heart


At the Tip of the Human Tongue

Bonito
Kimchi
        Bresaola
                        Greek cheese
    Yunnan Tuotea
                 Moët & Chandon
Etc, the like, &….

[Not unlike Li Bo’s poetry
Beethoven’s music
Da Vinci’s painting
Shakespeare’s plays]

Each an hourglass
        To keep time flowing, each is
A stored bottle of champagne
Regularly
Turned upside down
In an obscure corner of history,    to thicken the flavor


Only You Understand It

      I’ve just drafted a poem for you
Neither in English nor in Chinese
But in Greek (that no one under-
                 Stands except you)

    Without going through a renaissance
Rendition, you will recognize a Platonic feeling
Well contained within a Homeric stanza, where
You are to fall in love with a Hellenic robot
                 As of this very first sight


Creative Matrix

Like water
Life flows along
                      Fiction rendered into fact

Like steam
Consciousness evaporates above
                                                        Evil turned into good

Like ice
Spirits crystallizes beyond
                                             Ugly made beautiful



Beyond the West Hill

Everywhere the thought is looking for you

Sometimes at comet’s speed, other times
Wandering around, like a lost ghost
Through bushy forests & barren fields

      Until it pauses by a rugged riverbank

But will it reach you in wildness?
Will you receive it when it finally falls
Upon you, offering itself as a sacrifice
To one of your outburst emotions?


You Are the Shape of What You Feel

         I keep burning my spirits
But the shape of fire remains
Unchanged to each watching eye

So quietly when it reaches out its light
As if to the blinking eye of night wolf


Silver, Spoon

All of them were born
With a silver spoon
In their mouths, but me
With a silver chop-
Stick while you
With a bronze spoon

So we both have much to complain: my single chopstick
Can hardly pick up anything, whereas your bronze spoon
  Tastes only too awful


Denouement

        Well, you murmured, all that has melted into air.
Or it will
Well, you whispered, all that has melted once for all.
   & it will

     With a universal avalanche of starry silence, all
Gods will disappear among other human stories
The earth itself will be sucked into a black hole
All visible remains & records are to vanish into void

Every female will have been programmed into 0, while
    Every male into 1, far thinner than his bloated penis


Lost

      Last month it was my cellphone
Last night, my back head, where was
Implanted a wrong chip. & last
Moment I found my mind missing

Going back along the way, I tried
To retrieve it from my rage against
A rude fellow driver. Then in a fit
Of joy about the first child I had.
Followed by a deep regret… until
I got confused between memory &
Imagination, the former stored in
The left chamber of my heart, the latter
In the right.

           When it was over-
Whelmed with joy or bitterness, I
Cannot tell which is my true past
(Or my possible future) as it over-
                   Flows from memory to
Imagination; perhaps, with my protobeing

The two might be somewhat identical, or
                  Other (than) wise (?)


Catch 21: A Canadian Sonnet

                Were this inspired by luck per se
It could appear in an anniversary edition of TRM (or Fiddle-End)
Won the prize for the short poem of the year, &

                As I continue to add more syllables, this
Poem might well be included in a best of the best anthology
Or would even win a first CBC or GG prize, but alas

        I am neither a politically correct enough author
Nor does this piece really meet the strict requirements of
Perfect mediocreness. Rather, a victim of Canadian

    Conspiracy, I know this art(less)work is fated to fade
Into an invisible pile of ellipses in front of a nice editor
That are actually words written in bold, lines connectable

For example, to a blinking screen of dataism, or an icy page of
History, where the English cannon has long since been melting


The Unhappy Minority

…before I joined the great and, I believe, the happy majority. – P. T. Barnum

After leaving the unhappy minority
     You have come to
               Settle your protobeing down newly
At Sphinx’s nose tip
Between yin & yang
Among bloated sea foams…


Speciation

O yeah! There are still sapiens on Earth. Often do we remember & feel more than proud that only we Superors exist, we the most sophisticated & most exquisite human-robot compounds. It is true that from time to time we cannot help recalling one or two of them, like Shakespeare & Einstein, but that’s when they pop up unexpectedly from the back of a chip as a couple of forgotten algorithms. Their story tells them they are much more developed physically & intellectually than chimpanzees, while in the heart of history the latter is at least spiritually far more respectable. Since sapiens have proven good for nobody, nothing but a sub species of waste wasting endless earthly resources, how can we rid Our planet of them in such gargantuan crowds? -- To genocide them once & for all, or just to wait for their total self-destruction?


Story Exists Because…

Nothing else connects us who connect ourselves
Only through stories. Each of us is a story from
A different teller. Told at dawn or dusk.

        Believe. Buy. Change. Or share. It is
The network full of spiritual nexuses. Such as
Gods. Empire. Democracy. Equality. Datatism.

Yes, it is story being constantly recreated. Told &
Retold as it attracts both the human heart & body to
Kill a big elephant, or hunt down a Frankenstein








2019, 3, 22 Friday

Isn’t It

An ill wind
That blows
Every body good? Isn’t it
An ill blow
That hits
Every body’s heart? Isn’t it
An ill heart
That betrays
The truth about every body? Isn’t it
An ill body
That just consumes
Every kind of earthly resource? & isn’t it
An ill earth
That provides resources
To the human body only? Is it?


Coinage

For nearly half a century I have been searching
Searching everywhere
        For a single word
Omnipotent as God himself
That can be used
Simultaneously as a beautiful noun
Signifying the greater cosmos
As well as my personal paradise
A powerful verb, both transitive & intransitive
    Referring to the performance of my protobeing
In any way I want to put it up
 & a modifier
Describing the mood of air constantly changing
Within an unrhymed stanza

Alas, I just cannot find such
A word, into which I can compress all my
Feelings & spirits like a chip

So, I have invented this one for myself (& you?):
 Bamakoola


House Advisory

Roof: Always stand high & look afar beyond!
Attic: Fix the leak first!
Ceiling: Never hit the ceiling with megalomaniac!
Wall: Turn around before getting a nasty bump on your head!
Balcony: Stand aside to take a bird’s view of the situation!
Window: let some light enter your life!
Floor: Set your feet firmly in reality!
Stairs: [Watch your step! Or] Take   one step at a   time!

A few more from fixtures:

Air conditioner: Keep cool & calm!
Bed: Dare to dream!
Clock: Treasure every minute!
Calendar: Go along with the times!
Mirror: It’s necessary to examine your life from time to time!
Table lamp: Live to illuminate others!
Toilet: [Most important,] just let it go !!


There Is Never

A ruler so powerful as to rule out the rules, nor
A historian knowing so much about the past
As to see the ultimate truth, nor

A philosopher so wise as to stay insightful in love, nor
An artist so talented
As to express her innermost vision, nor

A star so lucky
As to win a prize without putting up a show, nor
A tree so straight
As to hold all its twigs vertically, nor

A dog so humble as not to wave its tail, nor
A watercourse so long
As not to join the flow of data, nor

A mountain so tall as to hear the whispers of gods, nor
A robot so smart
As to interpret subconsciousness, nor

A chip so large as to store the complete file about your protobeing; indeed
There is never a thing or human so much so as
To be, or not to be a human or thing at all


We Need

Nature, [which, alas, never
Needs us.] We need
God, [who, alas, never
Needs us either.] We need

Data, [which, alas, will never
Need us?] We need
IT, [which, alas, will find us most
Sapiens useless or redundant too?]


Century of Super Stories

Though never written or told
They have been constantly unfolding
Both in & outside the human mind as liberalism
Against imperialism, & communism
Besides all their variations

Until now not a single ism or story
Has really survived
Among data dictating all audiences


Salmon vs Trout: a Sexual Metametaphor

Upon his regular return
To his native river
After myriad oceanic hardships

He just misses the trout

As she happens
To leave her home lake once & forever
For an ever newer wave in the sea


Languacultural Poems (9): Verbal Conjugations

As many as 78
Different conjugations
Of a single regular verb in Spanish
Multiplied by three basic forms
Vs
One & the same verb in Chinese

Pinpointing

All alphabetic languages & Euro-American culture
As a time-sensitive civilization
Juxtaposed with
The space-sensitive languaculture
Within the roughly square-shaped Chinese character


Storying

If, amidst all the earlier stories
Including the Pyramid
    The Sumerian Code of Ur-Nammu
Bhagavadgita, & Zhuolu Battle, God is
The most told of yesterday
Communism the largest of
    Last century. USA the most powerful
Of today, & dataism supposedly, hopefully
Unimaginably quickly

The rosiest of
Tomorrow or, rather, the day after


Similarly

Every human being is as much of a story in its own right
As every word, every poem, every picture, every book
Every library, every city, every province, every country
Or government, even every civilization, each being well

Set in a desert of time & space
Constantly changing its boundaries
As the wind of history keeps blowing
From everywhere, from nowhere

Until now the biggest story is yet
To be told, retold & de-told
About there being no story at all
To begin with, again


Obscurity

Obscurely
You came     naked
Among nothing but a few cries
From a struggling young woman until
You live to die      fully clothed
With nothing more than a few cries
From one or two relatives (if any)

Between these two suffering cries are
A short dash on a stone, the only object
Related to you that remains standing
Against oblivion
A stony silence

   A flash fiction about
How much waste you have incurred as
You leave       as naked
Obscurely


Mega Interim

For the first time in the human history
All meta & mega stories have been
Created, told, retold, de-told, un-told
Until now there is no new story
Just as tellable yet
Except perhaps
      The human & manmade consciousness


Story of Infinity

Set in time & space
  In light vs dark
Imagination keeps
    Acting & reacting endlessly, dramatically
As each civilisation supports the main plot
  In numerous numbers

That’s how the only two human infinities
Are set a part in
  So many non-human infinities


Packaging

Just as everyone
Is masked, clad or costumed
Everything is
Packaged
For presentation
Outside one’s inner self

Even the skin is
Tattooed for show, where
The truth is never skin deep


Hocus Pocus

This [bread] is no other than
Jesus’ flesh
This [horse’s open mouth] is
       Vaisvanara
This [word] has
  A magic power
This [fish head] brings
 Courage & posterity
This [fluid] cures
    All diseases
This [sequence of syllables] drives away
  All evils & devils
This [ritual] ensures
      Good weather & good harvest
This [hat/hood] guarantees
    Purity, loyalty
This [flag] leads right
     To paradise
This [man] is
       A living god
This [statue, foiled or not] is
Omnipotent
This [chip] will transform us
       Into superbeings

So long as man is in his story,
All is well that believes well


All That Is Solid   Melts into Air

All that is liquid flows into data. All
That  is conceptual   evaporates into     cybospace. All that
Is genetic/   scientific condenses into an algorithm
All that is artistic /spiritual/cultural disperses   into
Digital being. All that is human evolves    into story


Fear, Jealousy, Hatred, Anger, or Shame

Hidden deep in a dark corner of his heart
Like a fly in the ear of a bull

When it can no longer
Stand the irritation
The bull begins to
Run, running amuck
In the china shop of his entire life
Where it can break every exhibit
Into sharp pieces


Oriental Philosophy

Leading to Laozian Dao
Or Dharma in Bhagavadgita
Is the balance
Between yin & yang, or
Among the three doshas



Authority

Then from God to Man
Now from Man to Algorithm
We upload ourselves
Onto the file of the cosmos
Stored like an olive fruit

At one end is !Kungs
The other Superbeings
In the middle all of us, useless

But when the tree falls
The fruit will not fall; rather
It will suspend itself in the air
Rotten


Human Chip

As AlphaZen beat Stockfish 8
I finally came to see
Who am I ?
- A biochemical algorithm
Where did I originate?
- From a bunch of material elements
Where am I going?
- Into a virtual world


Nowadays, There Is No Train like a Poem

That can take you with so few other
Passengers right through storms to
A realm far beyond the season

There is no car like a rhymed stanza
Of a literary ballad, where you can
Travel along with all your luggage

There is no seat like a line of blank verse
That from time to time throws you
Into a dream before arriving at your destiny

There is no space or time like a single
Word into which you can compress all
Your inner being to achieve immortality


Busy – fragmented life

Whose is this life as, between wake and dream
We spend every other minute looking at a screen?

Every other minute checking a message from
A friend, relative, total stranger or machine

Every other minute responding to a hail
Which turns out nothing but a junk mail

Every other minute continuing to search for info
Just to find the website stopped operation long ago

Every other minute trying to finish a game
Before the battery is finally running out

Every other minute watching the video
As real drama is unfolding around us

Every other minute returning to an article
Written & uploaded by a misbehaving robot

Not our whole life this as, between wake and dream
We spend every other minute looking at a screen!


Hope Has No Feathers

But like a kite it may fly high
Above the season in the sky
Whose string is
Held tight
In the hand of a running soul


Triolet – 8 syllables+lines : abaaabab

Of all that’s really worth a wish
Including words like wordsworth
I wish to wish, I wish to swish
A worthier word like Wordsworth
 Dish, fish, swish, whish


Deep Dream

You will never be there
         Even during sleep
Though both how and why
You may well know. What you don’t
Understand is the diction
Behind the words
The images juxtaposed, or
The feeling evoked
As the AI author ends the poem
With the way I lost
     My way in a paradise


Every Tree

Is livelier & lovelier than
An artwork like poetry or painting

An artwork that is unique, graceful, whose
Twigs embrace sunlight and moonshine alike

    An artwork that roots deep in reality
With each of its leaves smiling at the sky

An artwork that stands firm in time & space
    Against the earth’s most violent storms

An artwork is a deformed child like this poem
  But a tree grows out of the essence of universe


Universe / Nature

Looking up, I know
Even IC 1101 will be disappearing
Sooner or later, together
With Shakespeare’s plays, Einstein’s thought
& American fleets into total void; & down
Even the red red rose will wither
Sooner than later, out there
In the imperial garden

So, to attain immortality (or eternal beauty?)
I have finally come to see, is
To believe my own story
Unfolding right in this moment, where & when
The very idea of infinity can be eternalized





No Internet, No Life: a skinny poem

Come off the line, & the fish
Would
Die
Of
Hunger
Would
Gnaw
Deep
Inwards
Would
Come off the line, & the fish


2019, 2, 20 Wednesday

Deep Feel

I love my native country
Vehemently 
As I detest its culture

I love my father
Much
As I dislike his personality

I love my son
Greatly
As I deplore his lifestyle

I love my selfhood
Dearly as the whole human race
As I despise its animalness


Evolution (from Sapiens)

In the melting shadows
Of last mammoths & dinosaurs
Have been eliminated gods, saints
One by one, followed by
Heroes & even gentlerens until

Our entire human world is now packed
With survivors among villains, clowns
Hypocrites, money-bags, &
Super subhumans (after another ice age)


Catching

Given a mood of air
(Even if without mindfulness)
I could readily tell
A human soul from a speck of dust, or
Otherwise, &

Given a flash of enlightenment, or
A flash fiction
I could catch the soul
Flying by
Like an entangled quantum (of light?)


Personal Quest

From east to west
Among worst & best
In the world real &/or virtual
I have been trying

Trying hard to
 Find a fellow human
As high-minded as high-mannered
      But alas, no one is living
As a true gentleren

As I so strongly wish to see
As we all should live to be


Immortality

Worth may be rare
     Work can be bare
But words will live forever
As a digital being to declare


Simplest

Way to give your life
A meaning
Is to come up
With an answer to
Every why
About whatever you do, or
Wherever you are
     With a statement
Beginning with
Be [the] cause…



Tug of War

Constantly set
At a tug of war
   Is our mind
(& heart as well?)
Between yin & yang


Then
Between white & black


& now
Between 0 & 1


Sniffing Tiger Re-Viewed

The tiger in me
Sniffed every rose
On its way

The tiger has trampled down
Every rose in me
On my way

The tiger will miss
Every rose
On its way in me

To prey upon the antelope



So Full

Is my heart
Like the moon

Now is
 High time
To celebrate
      (Or meditate)

The roundness of life
The joy about the mid-autumn festival


Human Evolution

Forward, or
Backward

Being more civilised
Is
To be less
Of a human animal

In one way or another


Landscaping

Whoever stands
  On the mountain
Is its very peak, while the shore
Is the sky right
   At the end of every sea


Mirror vs Glass

Without a reflective film
Coated on the surface of the glass
We can clearly see through it
The whole outer world
Except our own face
Let alone our mind






2019, 1, 24 [Thursday]

Red Nos as Sonder Reversed

Open Sesame --

If only you were willing
To take a look at this little door &
Even decide to
Step in, there you would

Readily find your whole protobeing
Lost in just another parallel wonderland


Another Limbo

Hypnagogic, or
Hypnopompic
My protobeing lost itself entirely
        In the moment of
Creation when the word begins
To loom on the horizon, where

Yin keeps agitating
Within the feel of last night
As yang rises against the morning glow


Soft Power

Readily shapable (as water)
    Warm, salty (as blood), &
Clear enough to lubricate
Eyeballs
  (As well as hearts)
This artificial teardrop could move
The whole world into action

If only, no, only if
You could inject into it a feeling
Of love, or of tolerance 


Pigeons vs Wolves

    Their shit falling on every square &
Statue in the city, too many pigeons have ruined
The land- & mindscapes, while wolves are driven
Farther & farther into wildness, breaking
The food chain & even the whole ecosystem

Go away, Pigeons! We have had enough symbolic
Peace (& real war), but welcome back, Wolves!
Together with you might there be fewer elks
Coyotes, but more foxes, more rabbits, while
More trees like poplars & willows can return


Three Minutes before Suicide

Did he see a stranger’s face
Smiling to him? Did she hear

A friendly greeting? Did it
Have a traditional meal?

Did the poor boy get a fatherly pat
On his shoulder? Did the old woman

Receive a sincere call? Did the bear
See a helpful hand or claw?

Did his wife give the investor a kiss?
Was the new therapy mentioned to

The patient? Did someone happen
To chat with the lonely senior?

Did you
Or myself?



At the Depth of Darkness

Together with yesteryear
    Yesterday has
Shrunk, shrinking into
    A thinning line in the mind
As tomorrow looms larger & larger
Until it overwhelms the whole
Day today in this very moment

Now it’s too early for many people
Too early for so many people; the sun is still
Floundering on the other side of the ocean


Play Word

If you could
Which English word
Would you become? Which?

I would as lief
Be ‘life’:

 I may well turn out a ‘lie’
Without f--, but possessed in this word
My spelling contains many an ‘if’

    Yes, to live a life is to
Go through as many an if
As you might wish to wish


Another Prayer

Jesus my dear Lord!

Were I
Really to have an afterlife
I hope to become a wolf, or
A fir, for instance

Just to be a bit more, or even less
    Than a human being


As I Walk in Autumn

A leaf dropped right
Onto my shadow

I thought it was an angel
Of the season
Trying for a tryst

    With my protobeing
Lingering long behind


This Grass

You must see someday:
(It’s always harder than in
The case of a flower)
After it was

Burned as many as ten times by the climate
Trodden twenty times by the foot
Broken thirty times by the wind last year

    Yet this tiny & humble grass
Is standing straight up again
With no less pride & dignity
    Returning green with the whole season


The Noise

This noise that from time to time
Wedges itself between us
Will pacify my protobeing

What it believes is
There is no muted assonant silence


Be/Longing

Every body/thing
Be/longs some one/where
Some time

Even the human mind
(Let alone the heart)
Is embedded
Within a frame of feel/words


Progressing

Higher & Higher
Into the high space
Flies the robot’s spirit

Yet lower & lower
Down to hell
Falls the human mind

As a result of gravity?


Monday 4 October 2021

yuan's lit endeavors - oct 3


1/. got 14 acceptances in july, 14 in august, and 17 in september, among which 30 were offered by new magazines for the first time, including New World Writing and Malahat Review; 

2/. On July 2nd, a small American press informed me that they would postpone the publication of my collection  "Straddling Stanzas" until next year. The book included more than 30 what i have invented and called 'Bilinguacultural Poetry', which seems to have been quite well recognized by editors in Britain, America, Canada and Australia. I hope time will prove that this is one of my most important literary contributions.

3/ On July 10, Pacific Poetry Press published my first love poem collection LIMERENCE both in paperback and as a kindle e.book.  this is my tenth and the latest published English poetry collection, which contains 47 original love poems written in the past year or so; upon publication, about half of the poems had already appeared online or in paper magazines. In fact, this book is intended as a token I had prepared for my soulmatethe in case i could not survive the pandemic. links:  https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B09946XHNS/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=kindle+ebooks+poetry+limerence+yuan+changming&qid=1626024915&sr=8-1 (electronic version) https://www .amazon.com/dp/B0991CGXLJ?ref_=pe_3052080_397514860 (paper back)

4/. On July 31st,  Pacific Poetry Press put out the fifth book I have published this year, which is also my last (autobiographical) Chinese work Last Letters to My First Loves. This book is a memoir based on my personal experience as a village boy who grew to be a supposedly well educated person and became a first generation immigrant in canada. The main content of the first half was posted in my chinese blogsite with creaders.net eight years ago, under the general title of "Love Letters from Vancouver." but for a happy coincidence, the second half would never have been written to begin with. as in the situation of LIMERENCE. this book was published ahead of plan in case i could not survive the new crown plague. Connection: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09BLSWF5C

5/. On September 22nd, i published On the Corner of Walk and Don't Walk, a collection of English poems by Mr. Duane Anderson, both as an e.book and in paperback (kindle edition). links: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09GZSQYCD; electronic version: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09GWBTF1L

6/. On September 24, a small California-based press accepted my chapbook "All My Crows" for publication sometime next year, which includes 30 lyrical poems about crows. . The book was actually accepted by another small press as early as 7 or 8 years ago, but only to be later dismissed because the press suddenly stopped operation. at least half of these poems have been published in relatively well-established magazines. i am aware that things might change before a book actually appears, but the fact that it has been accepted twice is comforting enough to me. 

7/. On September 26, i published 胡說八道〉(Eight Lectures) by dr 胡子 (Hu Zi, pen name) as an e.book  in kindle edition in traditional chinese. The book includes hundreds of mini essays writing in a humorous style about the cultivation of body, mind, and spirit. Because there are illustrations and tables in the book, the editing and typesetting process was repeated more than 10 times. it took a lot of work, but the result was not satisfactory! link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09H6HP35H

8/. In recent months, I have written another ten love poems. In fact, since the beginning of the epidemic, I have been unable to return to my native country to meet my long lost first love. the only way to be together with her is to articulate my innermost feelings towards her. So far, I have written 48 English poems for her, and 5 to 6 original Chinese poems, of which 35 have been accepted or published. If my greatest creative achievement last year was to write and publish dozens of "bilinguacultural poems" in English, this year it is to have written and published dozens of love poems in English (all for one person).

9/. for more than half a year already, i have been hesitating a lot. though there are still many topics to write about, i decided, after waking up at two o’clock this morning, to discontinue my chinese blog series titled "Chinese Concerns'《忧华集》; instead, i plan to start examining my life and write about my thinkings over human life. more specifically, i will write about what i have realized about happiness, love, family, and other l most essential aspects of human life. at my age, it is high time to do such a thing to hopefully add some 'value' to my life as a human being through platonic exmination. 

Authors interested in publishing books in either English or Chinese are welcome to contact me at any time. Phone: 778/371-0952; Email: editors.pp@gmail.com

Wednesday 1 September 2021

[archived poems by yuan: 2018-2©]

2018, 12, 21 [Friday]

Bitten

Something keeps returning
To the heart
A little old guilt, like a mosquito circling back
Again on a sleepless night – biting deep
Into your flesh each time
After you wave it away, as it makes
Every shapeless concentration of thrombosis


    A summer devil, attracted by the blood
Enjoys driving away all nice & cool dreams

The heart pumps blood without stop
Often do you suffer insomnia, with
Your capillaries constantly irritated
By a seemingly innocuous vampire


You + Me

Each time you fall asleep
In the depth
Of darkness
Don’t fear, my dear

I will stay close on guard
Like the sun on the other
Side of the world, keeping
Your dream warm, &
Fully illuminated

When you rise with a morning
Glow, my light will cast a shadow
Always ready to follow you
Preventing your soul from lagging behind 


Folios

My study has a small section for dreams
Another for history, & all other
Shelves for hundreds of
Printed material containing my poetry

One day, to a ghost familiar to my
Other self, I try to show off with my own work
But just could not find a single line between
The two sections newly messed up


Another Butterfly Effect

Gracefully, her left ring finger flaps
Its unseen wings against a guching string
There at the deep heart of a bamboo
Forest
 & here in the English Bay
A tiny fish jumps out of the farthest
Boundary of the northern gyroscope, &
God knows how many days
Will pass before a tsunami roars
In Southeast Asia
    Or a political tornado
Sweeps across Northern America


Tea Party

Each time I gather with one or two old friends
From history or literature for a couple of tea, I
Set my clock about half an hour later

    Than all the time devices in the outside world
Just to make us a group somewhat out of fashion
So we can enjoy each other’s company in the past

Totally unaware of the happenings in the present moment
There we are about to sip from my proud enameled teapot
When police sirens disturb us, as if

    To remind us of the crimes and accidents in the street
Cannot help wondering: are we not allowed to keep a distance
To reflect upon, or to predict the future as posthumous?


Introduction to Modern Art

I would like you to meet Modern Art

Just in the same way as you found
Your other half the other day
Whom you fell in love with
(Right at first sight), but intending
To comprehend
(Neither for a single moment, nor for
The rest of your lifetime)


The Souls

Myriad souls keep floating around us
Like so many unseen specks of dust

While we are making bed or preparing
Our lunch. They follow us closely

In swirls of entangled quanta as they try to
Dance to the melody of our innermost songs

They rise and fall but never disappear
From among us, & when we sit or stand still

In meditation, they might be blown away by
A gust of summer wind. Hanging around, they

Find no path into the blank pages of history, always
Wandering like lost travellers between hell & heaven


Re-Creating

Towards the autumn sky
I make a shape of heart
With my clumsy hands
This is the feel of life
I tell the cloud

This is to illuminate the dark
Dreamland like a search light
I tell the crow stalking behind
Like the spirit of my late
Father. This is to gather all

The positive energy in the world &
Send it to the future. I tell my
Unborn grandson. This is the cycle
Of life & the philosopher’s stone

I tell the skeletal copse. This is
The circle to fill in with cries
& laughs.
      I tell my other self
Beyond cosmic wall, as if
To balance yin and yang
    In the whole universe


Oblivion

The first to go is the name
Like the title of this little poem

Then the image represented
By a thousand words, as if

One by one, the waves rushing
Against the beach, where not a single

Footprint is left by a snow goose
Stopping by during migration


China

Having nothing better to do, I kill
Time by looking at a traditional
Chinese painting on my iPad

Much enlarged, it appears like
A plain sheet of rice paper
Smeared with ink. I view it

In the presence of bonsai; I
Drop several thick strokes to the floor
Of history, leaving a few fine lines

Behind the sofa, & failing
To catch a colorless corner
Between black and white

It is a landscape newly relocated
Into my heart’s backyard. Then I sit
On my legs, meditating about there

Being no light in the picture, no
Shadow of anything, no perspective
As in hell. Isn’t this the art of seeing?


To the Scientist Feeling Awkward on 25 August 2256

On this 300th anniversary
Of mine, you simply
Cannot help feeling
  25 % less happy than

Normal? That’s because
My lost soul is trying to hack
The chip implanted deep
        In your heart!


Of Happiness

Everyone wants to be happy, but not every one lives a happy life in reality. Some were born with a happy character, some grew to be cynical and pessimistic, while others keep wishing to live happily. Some try to attain happiness through money or other tangible categories, others do so via fame or abstractions.

While most often confuse and confound happiness with success, achievement or other socially acknowledged measurement, few know that happiness per se is nothing but a personalized feel, a climate of the heart, a sustainable sense of self-content, a subjective choice and, as such, it has nothing to do with any ‘impersonal’ construct like money, merchandise, property, reputation; rather, it sis readily attainable to anyone any place anytime, like the air we inhale, since it can be achieved only within. This being the case, it is not only helpful but also necessary to develop a positive mentality.

Indeed, only when we learn to treat even the very worst with an optimistic attitude can we hope to live in true happiness. While one may suffer from unhappiness, another can still be happy even if s/he has a poor health and lives in poverty. Happiness is a choice to make for those who have to learn with a heavy heart, but a part of nature for those born and bred with a light heart. So long as you want to be happy, you can actually live a happy life no matter who you are, what you have, where you live.

Self-Healing

Rolling my entire inner self
Into a fallen leaf, but leaving
A crack at the tip, I hope
To let in some sunlight
    So I can warm up again, or
Make a whistle against the cold


Cycles

1/
Paved in time with petals
Shades, leaves & snow
The same road leads me through
One year to another

2/
The blue earth will evaporate
Like a dew when another
Civilization crystalizes from chaos

3/
I am not writing poetry
Rather, it is poetry
That is writing me, again

4/
1 is a line from past to future, while
    0 is the circle surrounding life


Chiaroscuros (tenebrism)

Antlike moments surging forward
Towards a distant shiny coastline

A beam of moonlight shooting
Through a thick forest at night

A lost crow cawing alone & aloud
Against the whole snowing season

That heavenly whim illuminating
A thousand miles of hellish darkness



2018, 11, 23 [Friday]

Better to Break up, Allen

because you deserve a truly fine or 'better' girl,
because you need all the more to focus on your career development,
because you two may probably have disparate underlying values,
because even if you manage to save the relationship, she'd 'betray' you later,

because (like her dad) she seems incapable of retaining a lifelong relationship,
because she appears frivolous or not serious about you, love, sex & marriage,
because her love for you is not concentrative and enduring enough,
because such unstable pre-marriage relationship is not worth saving, 

because she cares significantly less about you than the other way around,
because the more you try accommodating her, the more she is to be 'spoiled,'
because she shows less honesty and loyalty than she ought to,
because she is not intelligent enough at least in terms of academics,

because her pretty face and figure (her only true 'value'?) depreciates soon,
because her family lacking faithfulness, trust and commitment apparently affects her,
because her-uncommitabilty doesn't deserve your deep or unconditional love,
because it is a waste of time, effort and affection to go on dealing with her,

because she may turn out too 'newer-minded', childish & willful for you,
because her personality is stronger than you can comfortably cope with,
because she is not a good or 'perfect' fit to you,
because 'you can take the horse to water, but never make her drink',

because it's better to suffer short-term pain now than long-term torture later,
because …


Bucket List

1. last year: find a short cut leading all humans to happiness;
2. last month: invent something allowing men to piss without spilling;
3. last week: travel to a foreign unpopulated mountainous area;
4. last day: climb onto the highest spot in a forest;
5. last hour: settle down under a tall and straight tree like a dying elephant;
6. last minute: look as far as possible at the landscape like Sphinx;
7. last second: release my inner being so that it can fly up;
8. last mini second: join the proto consciousness of the cosmos; and
9. the rest of time: drift around every quantum entangled with my other selves

Sonnet in Prepositions: Yes, It Is Right

Among the buds ready to stretch out
Beneath the mid-autumn moon
Circa 50 BC; down a rugged trail
Except when He needed a pen to draw

From hilltop to hilltop; in an alphabetic
List where neither g nor h can be
Found; like j and k; minus all masks &
Sloughs; near the end of twilight; on the day

When frogs had just lost their voices
Per sight; qua art; re: immigration to
Asgardia; since the breaking up of the soil
Than the matrimony of two snow geese

Under the lowest cloud; via Styx
Within the absence of x, y & z


Neutralization

High mInd + Low poInt Of Happiness
Yields
The salt of Earth (wisdom?) &
Water … under a bridge

Or

Hardships of life
Plus
Reflections upon experiences
Leads to
Poetry (?), & fragments of
Feeling


Sonnet in Split Infinitives: Just Fancy Them

To really stay far apart from each other
Within the same inner space. To almost
Completely have gone to the far end
To not spill darkness over the horizon

Of mind. To in this manner treat
Their loved ones. To heavily knock before
Struggling to enter the backdoor of God’s heart
To totally ignore the rules & conventions

To boldly go when no women
Have gone before. To nobly
Maintain a low profile
With tyrannical pride

To surely & steadily go along. To deeply
Drive 1 into 0. To ever yang with yin


Master of My Selves

You have a whole pack of selfhoods, constantly
On the run, bolting ahead, or lagging behind
While sticking their noses in gifts left behind

By other quasi dogs. Sometimes, one jumps
Ahead of you. Another sprinting far off into
Invisibility, & a third dancing around you
Like the shadow of a daruma doll. However

None of them really outpaces your living
Consciousness or your protobeing. Leashed
As each of them is, they arrive at your final
Destination almost exactly at the same time

As your mind stops functioning, you cannot
Help wondering: I am their only master, or
Just one of them to catch up with another?


Sound Effect

O! Fill in this vowel’s empty mouth
With every confluent consonant

Until the circling letter is blown
Into a loud note of exclamation!


Second Hometown: Written for Visual Verse

As a brand new settlement, this quasi-
Utopian Jamestown lies deep
In the heart land of another Asgardia, where
There’s no sun or moon shining in the sky
No god looking down from above, not even
A tree, a hill or a stream in the background
But humans can enjoy all the leisurely moments
Trickling out of their overly crowded buildings

As in a classic Chinese painting, where
There’s always plenty of light illuminating
Everything brightly, but leaving not a single
Shadow in the whole landscape, where night
Seems more impossible than darkness

As if in Tao Yuanming’s Peach Colony, where
People live in colorful harmony
With nature, never aware of
The New World, much less
The triumphant Trump or
His America First

(written between 9:35 and 9:45 am on 6 November 2018)


Towards the End of a Beginning

Now is the high time
To begin the ending
By ungrowing
Into happy childhood
    Lost long ago

To rejuvenate our
Retirement
Day by day
Until our inner beings
Join His innocence
    As newly old newborns


The Most Meaningful

With so many more meanings
Than any other English word

Run has finally run out of definitions

In a dictionary as in a layman-
Defined life, much like mine


Negativities

Unhappiness oozes
From your inner
    Self, a different
Kind of sweat. It’s
  As if your protobeing has
Just run a Marathon race
    & burned out all
The unwanted fat
In your body


& now it’s outside
    Of you, unhappiness
Not a dehydrated waste
    But a by-product of
The consciousness. Like this

It will evaporate soon
Under the afternoon sun
Until what remains is
    The other version
Of past each time
You do a vigorous
Inner exercise in the wild


Gaining Perfect Health

Keep shining brightly
In your inner universe, &
Your heart will dispel

Every shade of darkness
Warm each cold corner, &
Nurture each spiritual cell


At Qingming Festival

True, it can never grow
Like a real seed, but
My father’s bone ash is
So well planted there

In the rich soil of his
Native village, it has kept us
Hoping & hoping
For just another harvest


What’s All This About?

As the blind fortune teller caressed the face
Of a patron, she knew the shapes, & color
By the flesh flushing to her tenderest touch

The sun was rising when I reached out my hands
For the stretching shadow, & began to feel
The slippery darkness from the world’s other side


Trees in the Depth of Autumn

The season shakes the whole forest, blowing
Every twig into a note of the rustling melody

From light green through yellowish to dark

Brown, as layers of layers of leaves retreat
From the sun as if peeled off like an onion


Language Acquisition: for Katie

You are learning the rules of syntax:
With a diphthong, you call Mama
In English (or yeye in Chinese), &
In a single syllable, you pronounce
Go after your favourite (winnie) pooh

Unaware of an world overly crowded
With nouns as subjects, you know it is
A verb that helps to convey a meaning
It is a subject followed by a predicate
That makes you a statement of innocence


On New Year’s Eve, Again

At each new year’s gathering, crowds
Count aloud to ten in every dialect:
Ten, nine, eight, seven, six
Five, four, three, two, one
As if to remind themselves in a ritual
Of what will turn to be the other side

Of when. Just minutes ago, you received

An automatically sent phone message:
If you do not act at once, you will be
Arrested. A mischievous call it seems
But I could have launched an evil missile
To blast the police headquarters for failure
To safeguard the peace of a whole inner world


Tuning in with Liu Weijian: a he Poem

So profoundly delighted am I
In listening to your xiao music
As it resonates with my inner voice

That I could die here & now in comfort
After finally finding my best audience
Much like Bo Ya meeting with Ziqi


Set Tight against It

The river through the city
Is littered with snags
Dumped by the storms
    On their way to the sea

Snags don’t leave with storms.
Floating up and down on the surface
They become invisible to lookers-on
Like hidden notes of history



2018, 9, 23 [Sunday]

As I Get Newly Old, My Dad Mailed
A Reminder to Me, Which Says

Soon you can no longer see anything, anybody clearly
Enough with or without your glass, even at a close range

Some pain will bug you here at a joint, or there
In an organ, and become part of your daily life

Also, your lower leg skin will sometimes get so itchy
You’d scratch them with a metal brush, or peel it off

You can afford to eat whatever you dreamed of in the country
But doctors will advise you to avoid any seafood, even meat

While you cannot focus well during the daytime, it is
Often a big battle to fall asleep in the heart of darkness

You will visit the washroom more often than you’d like to
But fail to urinate clean or excrete to your heart’s content

Seldom will you find yourself among fellow humans
Nor can you make new friends as you could before

You will walk more slowly until you lose mobility &
Carsickness will return & make you nervous again

You will go through all such & many other sufferings
Besides being chased by darkening shadows of death

But you can enjoy more freedoms than ever before, &
Stop saying or doing whatever you would rather not


Foreword

The plum-apricot tree bears less
And less fruit somehow
With each passing year
When it grows in my backyard

Its twigs reach higher
And farther to the neighboring yards
    Like lines from a poem
Before its author conceives it


Sonnet Starters: a Found Sonnet

When I have fears I may cease to be
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

I met a traveller from an antique land
Death, be not proud, though some have allowed thee

How do I love thee: Let me count the ways
Let me not to the marriage of two minds

When I consider how my light is spent
Remember me when I am gone away

I have been one acquainted with the night
Sundays too my father got up early

Earth has not anything to show more fair
Whoso list to hunt, I know where is an hind

Do not stand at my grave and weep
Love is not all: It is not meat nor drink


Metamorphosis Points

I would paint my skin
Into a colorless color, & I would dye my hair
Wear two blue contacts, & I would even
Go for plastic surgery, but if I really do
I assure you, I will not remove my native village
Accent while speaking this foreign tongue (I began
To imitate like a frog at age nineteen); nor will I
Completely internalize the English syntax &
Aristotelian logic. No, I assure you that I’ll not give up
Watching movies or TV series, reading books
Listening to songs, each in Chinese though I hate them
For being too low & vulgar. I was born to eat dumplings
Doufu, & thus fated to always prefer to speak Mandarin
Though I write in English. I assure you that even if I am
Newly baptized in the currents of science, democracy &
Human rights, I will keep in line with my father’s
Haplogroup just as my sons do. No matter how
We identify ourselves or are identified by others, this is
What I assure you: I will never convert my proto selfhood
Into white Dataism, no, not
In the yellowish muscle of my heart


The Smartphone

At daybreak, my wife unplugs it from the charger
Puts it into her transparent bag & goes to work at YVR
In a hurry, playing with it whenever she can, the gadget
Of post modernity. Occasionally, back at home, I look at it
Feel tempted to unlock it & take a quick peep to see
How much more of a husband it is than me. She had wanted
Her own phone & was delighted when I gave her last year. &
Since we’ve been married over thirty years, it seemed
Like the right time for the gift of a smartphone. A compromise
With the helpless inertia and intricate boredom of marriage

But today I thought of my brother’s wife divorcing him
For failure to strike rich or climb up high. Not smart
Enough to function in her daily life, and much less useful
Than a preprogramed device. How powerful the way a phone
Stays more intimate with a human soul.

    My son is a senior
Engineer at the Apple, where he spends every minute
In front of a computer, trying to perfect a circuit for another
iPhone to replace more husbandom (or wifedom)

             But I just
Cannot unlock it. Everything she wishes from me has now been
Digitalized into this e.machine. With just a soft touch, she obtains
All she needs from a partner that, though non-breathing, proves
Far more attractive than any living soul beyond the virtual reality


Tenancy

    Unlike the owner of a house who
Remains plump as a well-fed pet
Static as a loyal rock, accumulating
As the calcium on a reef, I keep moving
From one rented room to another

Like a migratory bird, a seasonal wind
Or a warm current in the sea, where I can
Dump some of my pasts &
Decorate my new residence with all the
Furniture I can afford to get from the future


Haplogroup Hypothesis: My Son Is Mine

The relief I feel today is not my relief

Maybe it’s my late father’s
For a male descendant carrying exactly
The same haplogroup as his son; i.e., for
The biologic fact that he has a grandson
To fulfill his filial duty as did Confucius

The delight I feel today is actually everybody’s.
Everybody is delighted because we are
All offspring of the same DNA Adam
If only we know how to trace back in the big tree

Because as 23&Me’s reports show, we will survive
Even if we continue fighting each other until
The last one: then he will become the next DNA Adam

For the past two decades I’ve had a hidden fear
George may have been wrongly switched at birth
As in a movie or the media, since he neither looks
Nor acts like me at all, but his paternal haplogroup is
O-PK4, consistent With Allen’s or mine (O-F838)

    The condolence I feel now is not my condolence
Rather, it’s everyone’s in that there’ll be no problem

For us to keep killing our own species, besides others


They Believe They Are More Advanced

In evolution, because they think
In numerous complicate languages
While we express ourselves just in
Several simple short-syllabled songs

They accumulate stones, graffiti &
Other countless (in)visible items
While we only pick up seeds
Or hunt animals in the open

They live on, for, & around money
While we follow our hearts only

They win their fucking rights
Through face, clothing, money besides stories
While we mate by dancing
Or fighting instead

They are busy trying to develop
Themselves in every human or inhuman way
While we don’t care if we are less
Advanced in nature


I Fly Across the Pacific

Myriad clouds sit still in sun-rimmed shapes
    Watching us like so many bloated sphinxes

As we pass through them with mechanic roars
    Each passes through our innermost horizons

Cherishing sunlight in its soft heart
& none seems to carry rain or anything else

Darker than a human whim. God knows
How many of them hold earthly dreams

Like seasonal secrets. Similarly, most of
    My fellow passengers are still sleeping

In these early hours; their postures as relaxing
As restricted within their confinements, while

A few were watching tv or reading on i-phones
In hypnopomp, I opened a journal & it took me

A moment to realize that a story is unfolding itself
      Though what it is really about I can never tell

    The main character has vanished into his own
Consciousness & the setting is beginning to collapse

No words are spoken. His soul becomes a migratory
    Bird flying to a higher realm of more still clouds


On My Birthday & Off

    I don’t remember how many years old
I am, but I do care about my birthday, a time
When I can imagine getting good wishes
Or words. Rather than having a party
With a big cheese cake or a bowl of longevity
Noodles, I would prefer to leave home
For a lonely walk in the country, wandering
In a poetic wonderland

   Where I stop to reflect:
For the past decade I have done what I could
By way of a poem, but since it is unlikely I can
Do anything with it, I find it the proper
Occasion to write one last stanza just
To commemorate my yearly visits to Quzhen
Homerburgh, Dantefield, Shakespeareston
Goethestadt, Pushkingrad, Baudelaireville
Nerudastad, Frostdale, & Tagorerboro


New Territory

No two watches (or clocks) tell
Exactly the same story/time
But each difference offers an infinitesimal
Crack inviting a lonely soul to enter
Like a lost spot of sunbeam. Almost
In no time
I come
I see
I conquer
All the new spaces deep in time


Deep Learning

Even when we were still chimpanzees, even
When we are to become breathing robots
We can always hope to enroll in Dream 101
A prerequisite course for humanity
(Not to be confused with ‘humanities’)
Offered neither in the Egyptian hieroglyph
Nor in the Chinese ideogram or
The Greek alphabet, but in
The colors of sunlight


Wakened by stillness, I realized
My dream’s been lost
Among white noises






2018, 8, 30 [Thursday]

Refracted Reflections (1): Inner Penetration

Dripping, constantly
Into the heart
Of the rock
    Quietude splashes
Over its whole being
Inside out


RR (2): Transporting

Once the road begins
To run forward
    The car can drop us off
At any destination
Beyond earthly traffic


RR (3): Spiritual Freedom

For every human soul, there is
    A whole patch
Of sky (or heaven), where
    It can fly freely
    Only if it can find
A taking-off position up there


RR (4): Self-Discovery

Unlike a handful of mud
Shaped by Fate
    Like an urchin, each
Of us is a rubber ball:
    The harder we hit
      Against a wall
The higher we bounce


RR (5): Return Trip

Collecting our past footprints
    As does every lost soul
We live a double life
As if through
A posthumous excursion



I Appreciate It: A Parallel Prose Poem

I appreciate the roof, ceiling, wall, floor  every window all the detailed structures of a room


Two Saying Sonnets on Shadow

1/ Sub-Selfhood

Each self of yours
Is nothing(ness)
 
But a shadow. Depending on
Whether there’s sunshine, or

Where the sun hangs
Above the landscape, your shadow
Keeps changing itself
    Within a shapeless shape

Sometimes shorter, other times longer
Always moving around your proto being
Bloated against light

Under the sun, the moon, or
A lamp deep in the valley
Of darkness surging towards dawn

2/ Cast by a Light

Hiding in a shadow
You cannot complain
 
    Against the unfairness, or
Injustice of the sunlight
On a clear day

Thoughts are the shadows
Of our feelings – always

Darker
Emptier
And simpler

So, keep your face
Ever
Towards the sun, and
Shadow
Will fall behind you


Hearing the Wind

You left there in old age
A snow ball off the slope

Heard a bus to heaven (or to hell)

Heard a field without any crop growing there
Which may have been reserved for an alien growth

Heard a young girl across the street
Dancing around a crowd of robots getting newly old

Heard a bomber taking off the New Foundland
While frogs were singing a lost monody
On the other side of the world at midnight

Heard a key hit hard before a blinking screen
& a naked body turning & twisting constantly on bed

Heard a couple of blackbirds tangoing on a powerline
    & myriad leaves falling against autumn

Heard an icicle beginning to melt under the afternoon sun
Ready to shed tears in memory
    Of last storm:

Shhh, my Lord, just let sounds
Fill up my ears, and heart stealthily


Accident

Fiction hit
The fact hard, and ran

With truth per se
Being the only witness


No Internet, No Life

Once off the line, the fish
Would die of the hook
Gnawing deep into the heart



Truth

The facts have buried themselves
Deep in fiction, where
    History stands tall & straight
Like a wordless tombstone


Sonnet in Infinitives

To be a matter when there’s no question
Or not to be a question when nothing really matters

To sing with a frog squatting straight
On a lotus leaf in the Honghu Lake near Jingzhou

    To recollect all the pasts, and mix them
Together like a glass of cocktail

To build a nest of meaning
Between two broken branches on Ygdrasil

To strive for deity
Longevity and
Even happiness

To come on and off line every other while

To compress consciousness into a file, and upload it
    Onto a nanochip. To be daying, to die


In the Shadow of Socrates

Someone tells me I look like Laozi
    It is the way my forehead protrudes
Or maybe it is my eyes

Someone mentions Socrates to me
Though I am not interested in his maieutics
Nor does he seem to care about my indifference

Anyway, I remain as silent as Sphinx
Or Laozi’s Dao which, once articulated
In a human speech, would become totally lost

Like truth
Like wisdom
Like any authentic knowledge

While Socrates pursues his argument persistently
I move my proto being far away
From every shaped human

He enjoys arguing
I believe whatever is voiced
Will get lost in void

He upholds logic
I uphold mythicism as someone tries to bring me
Under the influence of the Greek syntax &

    Cast Socrates’s shadow on my thinning soul
But I shy away farther to an unknown forest, where
 I will eventually die alone

Like an old African elephant that does not want to
Disturb the progression of
A whole migratory family


Snowing in Spring

             In the wild open west, flakes keep falling
Like myriad baby angels knocked down from Paradise

    Blurring the landscape behind the vision
Hunting each consonant trying to rise above

The ground. The day is brighter, lighter &
   Softer than the feel. Soon there will be

      Dirty prints leading to everywhere (or nowhere)
& no one will care how the whole world will collapse
        In blasphemy. The missing cat won’t come to
       Trespass the lawn, nor will the daffodil bloom

To catch a flake drifting astray. Nobody bothers even to think
     About where the season is held up on its way back, how
         The fishes are agitating under the pressure of wintry
         Water, why people wish to see more and more snow


The Past

   More than enough has been recollected
      About being in the past. It’s no time
To be, yet except for a handful few, many
  Keep filling in the blanks of the present

          With the leftovers of the past, or catching
The past from the present moment as if the present
         Were a tail of a vanishing fish rather than
             A rock from which the colt is running

       To the rising sun. Indeed, the trouble with
       The past is that it is deadly lost in the white pages
Of history. Plus, even if the past can be edited, but never
 Be rewritten. So, let’s move to the future where

The wise men want us to, where the pasts cannot
   Prevent us from surpassing the present




Sunday 1 August 2021

Yuan's Last Letters to My First Love Just Released

Last Letters to My First Love is Yuan Changming's fifth book published this year as well as his last Chinese work ever written. In this non-fiction or autobiographical book, Yuan employes montage and what he calls  'diary-letter' as his basic narrative framework to recall and re-enact his rich life experiences starting as a Chinese village boy, who worked in a 'labor camp' after high school during the 'Cultural Revolution' and served as a college administrator before coming to Canada for his doctorate and becoming a prolific English author of poetry. For anyone interested in the lives of contemporary Chinese intellectuals and immigrants, Last Letters to My First Love offers a highly relevant and representative read, which can be seen or even 'examined' as slices of a whole sociohistorical age. 


This is the link to the electronic version of Last Letters to My First Love: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09BLSWF5C

CALL FOR MS SUBMISSIONS: Those who have poetry, fiction or non-fictional books to publish, please feel more than welcome to contact PP Press at editors.pp@gmail.com