[archived]: Poems by Changming Yuan © - 2007

-On-the-Peak (included in trioscape #22)

Dark green waves dancing

Hippy-hoppy-happy hornpipes

Up and down the slopes

As the drift and the dream

The weave and the wave

The fume and foam

Of the sea of trees

Turn my mind into a drifting buoy

Father out, the great graceful breakers

Moved like kings into court

Trailing the peacock-

Patterned forest behind them

At my feet the mists stroked the grasses

With soft little paws

Floating right amidst the green spirits

Can I see the true face of the closest tree?

-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

A Sky Filled with Red Noise

Wrapped tight against light

With thickening layers of

Layers of transparent words

Our glamorous globe is decaying

Among netted privacy

Oh for a spell of a heavy rain

Cleansing and cooling down

This world warming with wild whims

-Silly-Simile

Just like the noon sun that can shrink

The shadow of a bulky frankenstein

Into a tiny dot, a late night moon

Can enlarge the shadow of a small soul

Into a long and heavy curtain

To block the view of all the clowns

Trying to put on a night show on the stage

-Fat-Facts about Wonder Whales: A Wild Wish

1. As the biggest animal in the world, you have the loudest voice in the living universe;

2. It is your roar rather than your song that can be heard even three thousand kilometers away;

3. The most devoted mammal, you never leave blue waters, except when trying to catch a dream above the sea;

4. With the biggest mouth in the animal world, you can swallow 50 tons of water, tears or sweat.

5. Your songs are made up of long low notes; you reserve your short and high notes for making an uproar;

6. Some of you can hold your breath well over an hour to dive a depth of 2 or 3 kilometers just to touch the sea floor;

7. With the heaviest brain among all creatures, are you destined to be the ultimate ruler of the living world?

-Grace of Gold

1/ gold is valuable not really because of its bright beauty but because of its resistance to rust

2/ as the most malleable metal, gold of a small ping pong ball can cover the whole floor of a basketball court

3/ it is aqua reqia or royal water that can dissolve gold and even golden hearts

4/ gold is never a rare metal: 9 billion tons of gold is dissolved into the world’s oceans

5/ the biggest gold nugget is found not in a treasure house but under a rotten tree’s roots (71 kg; in Victoria, Australia, 1869)

-Static Statistics Suggested

17: the number of muscles you use to smile

43: the number of muscles you use to frown

--why not smile more often?

50: your weight in kg on earth

1390: your weight in kg on sun

--why try to lose or gain weight?

206: the number of bones in an adult’s body

350: the number of bones in an infant’s body

--is that why children are less stubborn?

8: the number of cents worth of gold in a human body

50: the number of tons of gold dissolved in one cubic kilometer of seawater

--is this the reason for all human poverty?

-Reading the Opening of Genesis

1/ the biggest difference between reason and religion lies in the way the former tries to explain everything while the latter explains everything

2/ the narrator of the holy scripture is obviously more omniscient and more omnipotent than god himself, for he knows what god had said and done long before adam was created

3/ is faith really necessary to the mind as breath to the body?

4/ where was god before he created the heavens and the earth, and what had he been doing until then?

5/ he who has a god is really fortunately happy

6/ religion is attractive because humans need answers to the questions they cannot answer in their own voices

-Qiu-Shaoyun: A Soldier-Story

Once upon a time, during the forgettable Korean War…

Neither his family background

Nor his educational level

Nor even his true name

Is meaningful here

But he was a soldier

Fresh from a remote farm

Lying flat on his belly

Burning himself second by second

To a slow and prolonged death

On a foreign busy slope

Soundless, motionless, as if feelingless

So his comrades in arms

In their ambush positions

Would not be killed by random enemy fire

While his sick mother

Called his name

In her wintry dream

His fiancée praying for his safe return

Under the oldest village tree

Yet he is no more a hero

Than a great general now

-War, the War (Aside)

During the Korean War, about 120 soldiers deployed themselves close to the enemy positions in ambush for a whole snowy night. At 5: am when the regime’s trumpet horn signaled the general offensive, the company failed to jump up as before, because all of them had been frozen to death, each still remaining in a position ready to charge uphill…

The Political Instructor

We will defend our motherland

With the new great wall of blood and flesh

As well as the old rifles in our hands

Yes, our weapons are out of year

But our will is more than strong

Oh, I wish to see my newly wed wife

What is she doing right now

Snowflakes, bog, beautiful

As large as in my home town

But not so white and fluffy…

The New Soldier

Whew, I am really nervous

And it is burning cold out here

But I cannot move

Or the enemy will spot us

And kill us all

With their all powerful weapons

I will wait, keep still, damn it

Once the charge horn is blown

I will rush forward

I do not want to be a coward

I cannot lose face

Yes, I will bring honor

To myself, to my parents

To my villagers and my ancestors

I will live up to my family name

Shee, my blood is frozen

But I cannot move, should not

Will not, not, no, n…

The Cook Soldier

Sorry, boys, too bad

I cannot cook at this moment

But after this battle I promise

I will find the most edible grass roots

Tree leaves for you boys

And cook you a big meal

With your fried flour

And a lot snow

And a bit more salt

You know every time when

I see you wolfing down food and soup

I think of my own boys

Always hungry as colts

Yeah, my sons, where are you?

-Tree Stumps

Like check stubs

These stumps are kept deep

In the earth’s heart

Until the account is closed

They will well remember

Every single withdrawal

Made by human extravagance

-Walking in Different Shoes

Philosopher: left is a phenomenon

Right is the essence

Businessman: left is money

Right is risk

Poet: left is rhythm

Right is imagery

-Allenian Dragonmania

my younger son is the greatest fun
of dragons i've ever known as a chinaman
he could lecture hours nonstop
on various dragons' magic talents
he often insists that in his own room
everything is transformed from a dragon
once he asked me in loud resentment
why he was not born in the year of dragon

on a shiny night with his little might
allen shrieked all his way to my dream
confused, confounded and horrified
before he told me a fantastic tale:
a real living dragon in its authentic form
had thrown a visit through his window
confessing behind his mind's curtain
it had been deeply touched
by the tremendous tenders of affection
my son had made to him in private

-What do YOU see then?

It is your golden-rimmed lenses

Rather than your naked eyes

Or it is your naked eyes

Rather than your virgin mind

That look at yet without seeing

the morning glow

The shadows of maple trees

And the pecking crows

Outside of your rooms

All rented

-When You Think, You Are

The red red rose is not my luv

So I first cut the rotten roots

Then the sick thorns and stems

Then the infected leaves

And then the fading petals

Until finally I can only keep your head

Deep in the pot of my soiled heart

Where you may remain eternally alive

As sheer consciousness

Growing Solitude

Up above

on a hilltop

stands a lonely being

Being alone

-Time Is the Makeup Master of All

With your wind-like fingers

And colored cosmetics of sunlight

You make up all faces and facets

Before putting their bodies properly

Onto the front stage of life

Though you may not exist at all

-China Charms: on the Honghu Lake

Among dozens of colonies of lotus

The flowers grow in crowds of colors

White, pink, red, blue or purple

Except all leaves green, as stems arise

Straightly from blackish muddy lakebeds

As if to pave a path for a patrolling Buddha

The most versatile plant in my original country

Lotus is now seen in terms of seeds and roots only

Both sweet and crisp to its finicky eaters

While the much lauded purity of its big flowers

Has become a forgotten foreign cliché

Under a cluster of tall and broad leaves

The boatman in straw rain cape suddenly squatted

Not to hide from the summer shower

Chasing the giggling seedpod pickers

But to reveal a secret to me touring from Canada

Each of those standing tall above the lake

Has a groom lying flat on the water nearby

-China Charms: 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?

-China Charms: Visiting the Weisui Lake

The same kinds of pine trees

The bushes no less bushy or brilliant

The same lines of mountain ranges

As irregularly handsome

The waters also composed of h2o

Certainly just as clear and clean

With even more lively fishes swimming

In leisure, and in this unknown valley

How come it has not become a costly resort

Like the famous louise lake there

At the feet of rocky mountains, for instance?

-China Charms: At Badalin, the Great Wall

Among thousands of climbers

Like so many fallen autumn leaves

Drifting up and down along an embedding stream

Names carved with keys and coins

Weathered over days, years and centuries

So many lives have been lost

As witnessed by fewer and fewer worn bricks

Breathless, I spotted a foreign black woman breathing hard

With a pair of shiny crutches

Standing against the darkening sky

How could you manage to come all the way here

By yourself? I wonder

-Far And Near

You seem so near

As near as the red rose

Pressing against the window of my heart

When you drive along a foreign freeway

As the morning sun begins to shrink your shadow

On the other side of the world

You appear so far

As far as a muted star

Glimmering through the rift of my mind

When I clam you in tightly with my limbs and heart

As the setting moon prolongs my womanhood

At this private spot of honeysun

-Evolving Human Communication

you wonder why you would wonder why you should wonder why you must wonder why you have to wonder why you wonder…

--hello, may I speak to ss?

--call me asap

--wrong number

--you are a man or a woman?

--(u r a human at all?)

-Passing the Construction Site

At a huge and busy construction site, people are moving and removing bricks under a scorching summer sun when a blind passer-by comes up trying to find his way out of the noisy place. Approaching the first worker he meets, the disabled man asks: what are you doing here? don’t you see I am carrying these stupid bricks? A few steps more, the poor pedestrian asks a second worker the same question, and the answer he gets is: as you can easily see, I am trying to build a wall. Confused and confounded by the different answers to the same questions about the same situation, the unseeing outsider asks a third one, who replies, well, you see, I am constructing a home. At these words, the blind person finds his way out.

-Bygones Is All Becoming

The scraping pain from the tenderest part of your heart bone

The prolonged echo of the nightingale’s calls from heaven

The morning glow between flirtatious mountain peaks

The very richest cuisine for a hungry Chinese mouth

The stifling smell of garbage during an endless strike

As well as the rapidly increasing or decreasing numbers of dollars

Blinking joyously on your pc screen

The spreading of your name from tongue to tongue

Within the boundaries of the human world

And of course the orgasm at the ejaculation

On an ecstasy bed of midsummer’s night

Indeed, all is becoming bygones

-China Charms: 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?

-China Charms: In Huanglongdong Cave

With thousands of stalagmites

Potent, tall, hard and wetly smooth

Pointing naked upwards or downwards

Each of them grows only one centimeter

In a circle of complete century

(Is this cave a secret basement

Where god stores immortality

Or an open museum of penises

Nature’s totems of life?)

-China Charms: In Jinzhou Museum

1/ tripods

It was too difficult to make stone tripods

With nothing but stone axes or chisels

So our ancestors first tried to make one

Out of clay, then bronze and then iron

What kind of tripod can we construct now

Should we keep making tripods

With ever newer materials?

2/ jade cicadas

no, they are not cicadas fossilized

tiny, yet chubby with smooth skin

and full of translucent flesh

as so many twins born

over 4000 years ago

without laser technology, how did they

make so tiny a hole through the head

and thus fossilize its calls and songs?

3/ burial-urns

with a tripod for the ash

so directly connected to the dust on the ground

to give as much room as possible

for the living soul separated not afar

in the middle by a perforated plank

to allow the traffic or communication

between the ashed body and roaming soul

but who was the designer

for the little gate on the cover

as if in a bird cage?

-Three trees

Into the backyard
Of my humble heart
I transplanted three nameless trees
One blossoms in spring
And bears fruit in summer
One wrestles with winds and rains
On each less bright day
But the third does nothing
Except standing idly there
Up towards a distant star

-Ancestry-Worshipping

No, we never planned it that way

But it so happened this seventh summer

I took my twelve-year-young son

To my father’s native village among hairless hills

In the far east end, the other side of the world

Which he had left as a starving orphan

And returned with me in the Mao suit

Like a magic-toyed boomerang

When we were both at Allen’s age

For the first times in our lives

Last time, my father forced the Little Red Guard in me

To kowtow, burn joss sticks and paper money secretly

For his parents, whose dialect had survived

Though I understood it only half-heartedly

This time, I cajoled my boy to grasp a handful of earth

From the grave of my grandma worshipped by villagers

(Her humaneness has supposedly made her a local deity)

And smuggle it to the backyard of our home in Vancouver

Like some foreign seeds prohibited at the customs

As we departed, again, our clan elder chanted:

Under the shade of a new highway

This old grave will soon be erased…

-Last But Not Least

All my life is a preparation for this moment

So, please remove all these pipes and needles

(Meant to nail and chain me in this earthy cell)

Feed me with no more food, drink or fluid

(They are nothing less the poison to my mind)

Stop quilting me with any blankets or bed sheets

(For my spirit is warm enough to rise like a balloon)

More important, keep talking or playing a yani to my ears

(They are my final exit from this crowded room)

Ok, now, let it be right against light

Let me use my might to think bright

Shrinking all my shaded consciousness

Into a tiny transparent dot, and remind me

To become a god rather than a ghost

Farewell, you poor humans

-Daybreaking

From the sky’s east side

Comes time’s high tide

Lashing the chest of night

Seeping into every site

Of waterproof dreams

Before rinsing the polluted

In this flood of light

All My World

As a salmon, I have dug a tunnel

Long and narrow, with my streamlined mouth

Under the broad water street

As a cuckoo, I have made some calls

Loud and short, with my blood-voiced throat

Among the mountain mists

As an aspen, I have outlived my body

Heart and soul, with my unheard song

Near the waterside of an unknown lake

This is your whole world:

An unseen spot of time

in an indefinite space

-dethinking

-Rain Clouds

Close to the bold borderline

Between the sky and the sea

You rise, together with the sun

Below giggling morning glows

Above sour songs, loud lights

Hot hopes in the humanscape

You keep drifting around, slowly

Summoning each salty heart

Beyond the shadow of dream

Beyond the dream of summer

You grow ripe and ready to fall

To myriads of lucent oval tunes

-Circle within Circle

Year in, year out

He kept drawing circles

One after another

In an open circle

As if to seek the focal point

That is right there

Within his own hand

-Nail

please remove all the iron in my blood and make it a nail so that I can drive it in a crack of time

-Keatsian Variation

Heard melodies__________________

Are sweet those

Unheard are________

Sweeter _________________

songs sung_______________

Are fragrant ______________

Those unsung_____

Are even _____________

More

Fragrant________________________

-photo of Family and Friends

TIMETIMETIMETIMETIMETIMETIME

I S

S I

I spacespacespace S

S i s I

I s i S

S i s I

I s i S

S i s I

I s i S

S i s I

I s i S

S I s I

I s i S

S I s I

I longlonglonglong S

S I

I S

S I

IFARLARGERTHANLARGERTHANS

-Eyeglasses

WHO TOLD YOU THAT YOU WERE BORN WITH A WEAK VISION

w yhavetowearapairofglassesy b

I o o e

T u u t

H c c t

O a a e

U n n r

Tcanyouseewhatyoul ookatorlookatwhatyouc

-Walls and Windows

All walls are unique human constructs that can protect us against rains and winds, but they also confine us to an enclosure that is located amidst loneliness, indifference and restrictions

-O0Dor (a logo poem)

01010101010101

1 0

0 1

1 0

0 1

1 0

0 1

1 0

0 1

10101010101010

-Image on Paper

Is a picture

A poem

A photo

A sign

A piece of calligraphy

Or a doodle?

-Return to the Sender

A red maple leaf perhaps

Sent by autumn

In an envelop of hope

Stamped with summer light

Undeliverable to

Changming Yuan

8033 Osler Street

Vancouver, BC

Canada V6P 4E3 yuans@shaw.ca

-Birdkeeping:-A-Play-Poem

scene i

A [in front of a detached house, trying to repair his fence while talking to himself]: Fucking hell, why does there have to be winds all the time? Without these wicked winds I would never have to worry about my fence, and the whole universe would have been much more peaceful.

B [passing by, with a bunch of empty birdcages behind his shoulder]: A nice day to do some repairing, eh? You know you’ve got a pretty solid house here.

A: Yeah, but it has cost me a lifetime, though, and I can never pay off my mortgage.

B: You know what I would do? I would hung a bird cage and keep it open. They say it will make you feel happy at least.

A: Really?! Wish to have one then.

B [giving one of his empty birdcages to A]: Here happens to be one for you. Happy or not happy, you will keep a bird.

A [taking over the cage and trying to hung it somewhere]: How come? But we’ll wait and see! [aside] Me to keep a fool bird in this cage? No way!

scene ii

A [receiving a guest in his living room]: So, how’s everything going, pal?

C [looking at the bird cage]: When did you begin to have a bird? What’s happened to your bird?

A: My bird? oh, I never keep a bird, but just …

C: ?

scene iii

A: [talking to himself before trying to answer a phone call]: Me to keep a bird? No way!

D: [at the other end of the phone]: I almost forget to say I am sorry for your late birdie, but didn’t you take good care of it? Perhaps you did not know how to keep a tender songster to begin with? I’ll lend you many really helpful books; perhaps I can give you some good tips right now?

A: Oh no! I never keep a bird except…

D: Come on, and cheer up! A bird is just a bird.

scene iv

A [in front of his house, trying to repair his fence again while talking to himself]: Dogfart, why does

there have to be wicked winds so often? Without them I would never have to worry about my fence, and the whole universe could have been much more peaceful.

E [trying to sell a new product to A]: This time I remember bringing a beautiful bird as a little present to you. Here you go [putting a pink parrot into the cage].

A: Thanks very much, but…

E: Don’t mention it. This bird belongs just as much to your cage as your cage to this bird.

scene v

A [standing in the middle of his living room and yelling loudly at the parrot in the cage]: Me be a bird in cage? Oh no, me keep a bird in cage? N--

[the parrot mimicking]: mi-bi-bir-din-kei; mi-ki-pir-din-kei; mi-bi-bir-din-kei; mi-ki-pir-din-kei…

-Stairclimbing:-Another-Play-Poem

scene i [on the main floor, in front of the elevator, right at midnight]

A: How come the elevator has never come down?

B: Probably out of order, again?

C: Why not just climb the stairs and go home?

D + E: Good idea, Bro!

scene ii [on the 20^th floor]

B: I am tired of slogging up this stupid stairs.

C: Me too, especially with all this damned luggage.

D: How about putting it here? –we can come down to fetch it when the elevator is okay tomorrow.

A: You can say that again.

scene iii [on the 40^th floor]

C: Totally exhausted. Wish to have been waiting down there like all other folks.

D: Why the hell did you suggest climbing all these fucking stairs?

E: Why the hell should we have agreed to do this most stupid thing in the world?

A: Anyone got a bottle of water? Dying of thirst here.

B [to himself in a low voice] I got half a bottle, but I myself may need it later.

scene iv [on the 60^th floor]

D [breathing hard]: I wonder, how many, more steps…to go?

E: Too tired, to climb, another level…

A: Got to take, a good break…

B + C: whew, whew…

scene v [on the top 80^th floor]

E: Finally, finally, here we are. Who got the key?

A: I don’t…

B: Left it in the lugguage.

C: Mine also down there.

D: Jesus Christ!

Changming Yuan

8033 Osler Street

Vancouver, BC

Canada V6P 4E3 yuans@shaw.ca

-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

-Run-on

One would try to add a colon now and then

Another might insert a semi colon up and down

Still another could have used a period here and there

but he knows only when to cast a careless comma

as he writes, writes, and keeps writing

his entire life into an ever long-winded sentence

-Battle of life: A Cartoon Poem

A glass bottle with a big belly but a narrow neck

Full of bow-colored and manna-like food

A hairy scary monkey hand grasping more than it could

Tightly stuck close to the bottleneck

-In the Prairies

There are

No pens

No fence

No railings

No windbreaks

No walls

And no boundaries

Except whirlwinds

Blowing wildly

Across the territory

As another little grass

Tries breaking the earth

Like a new syllable

Sprouting at the tongue tip

-At Downtown Vancouver: A Flash Poem

I was waiting in my cozy compact on a rainy Saturday night for a long red light when I saw a human figure weeping and wailing at a public phone disconnected if seen from behind on the back of the bare booth, both broken.

-Boomerang Back to Beijing

For 13 hours in a row

Long enough to fly to heaven

I put myself in the custody

Of an unknown god

Above thick rain clouds

Closer to bow-colored dreams

Floating fiercely around

The human voice behind

Belonging to a wingless angel

Constantly reminds me

Of my forgotten destiny

Far at the other end

Of the world below

My point of origin

-The Fallen Tree

I had taken it for granted

All trees stand upwards

But this one fell down

Too tired or too sick

Too old or too drunk

To keep itself straight

In last night’s storm

Seeing the pine tree lying there

Its proud needles stained with mud

I cannot help pressing my horn:

Rise, and hold your noble head high!

-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

-The President and the Mouse

Nothing went wrong to begin with:

The president had made a speech

As powerful as penetrating as ever

Which was televised nation wide

But some of his diction so infuriated

Jake’s boss in their imposing building

He gave Jake a huge pile of bullshit

The first thing in the very morning

For obvious reasons Jake could

Not throw out it back at his boss

So he passed the whole shit to Jane

After returning home from his work

And so Jane passed it to little John

And so John to his bulldog

And so the bulldog translated it

Into much more dogshit and

Passed it to a mouse in the storeroom

Usually on the high alert against

A neighbor’s cat…

-Shreds of My Shadow

Soon after the summer sun

Pushed my yellow shadow

Beyond the boundary of land

And threw it onto the blue see

A wild wind blew it into shreds

Across the foamy fields

Let them swim like salmons

Or grow like seeds in spring

-Snow Dancing

Drifting, slanting, flying

You spirits of winter water

Coated with white and fluffy

Silences and serenities

Fall as if from lucent dreams

Erasing and eradicating

Every god-marked boundary:

Between day and night

Between living and dead

Between the earth and the sky

Between the ugly and the beautiful

Streamlining each angle and corner

With your soft and tender power

As you dance wildly and vigorously

To the unheard melody of heaven

All quiet and white, but at a site of light

The shadow of a crow is turned into a glow