Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
 
If mental scars
were rungs
on a ladder
It would
stretch up
into heaven
I left my home in West Lake
        in the sunshine of my youth
        the world to discover-
        mum wept and said: 'Do be good'.

       I consoled her and dad:
      'Your ways I'll follow in my sojourn
      a letter home I'll send every week
      I'll do you both proud--be of no concern'.

     A village -school I became
     Confucian culture I taught
      also the best of Tang and Sung poetry
      all my pupils found in rapture wrapped.

     The salary was poor
     in a abandoned barn I slept
     reading at night in candle-light
     hardship I did endure and accept.

    The beautiful daughter of the headmaster
    by the green summer- field I met
   ' So delightful are the poems you wrote':
     (to me with beaming eyes) she lovingly said.
  
     Her picture I sent to mum and dad gladly
      'Ming, you're no longer young'. they confided
     ' it 's time you settled down- Mei is so pretty-
     we hope you'll be married ere we're dead'

    Mei came to the barn one early night
    to her my poems I read:
    her eyes welled in tears
   '  I love you- so very  much' she suddenly said.
      
     Two years quickly passed by
     Mei's dad from cancer suffered
     ' Ming, you're like a son to me
       take over from me'  he pleaded with a look so sad.
      
     On a  sunny day Mei and I tied the knot
     mum and dad travelled 8,000 li* and attended
     we had the village's Chief and all the dignitaries' patronage
     the event was the most ever celebrated.
    
  * the Chinese mile, 500 metres
****** if I do
****** if I don't
So congratulations
You win
I won't

©2024
I am watching a honey bee
Entering hearts of flowers
Searching for a heart which can offer her love  honey.
What other kind              of creature could divide        
        Each different thing             into its different sides                
  With chaos versus             order, dark and light
The stark duality of         wrong and right
We even split the very        world in two
With human versus human,       we and you
But still no matter how much      we divide
Each thing has infinitely many      sides
~for Paul & Art~

<>
melancholic, contemplative, introspective,
put on the songwriters of the Sixties,
looking for the comfort of old songs
that I once knew complete, from the days
when I believed, knew my own true self complete,

the tablet lifted, the spirits keening, a forth
will be coming, to soothe and purge, commence to dress my own wounds,
Whitman would be attentive, perhaps
a tad sympathetic, tho my wounds are
entirely self-inflicted

and alone, cry out for an assembly
of words, well chose, smoothly chaotic,
mirroring the lathe of my sharpened
disarrayed confusions, two old troubadours
come to comfort, with sweet harmonies,
and simple, but novel rhymes &
syncopated rhythms that all can
carry, sing along, all of us smiling

with ease, we cross the borders of each
other’s mind, paring snippets into
poetic clasps that keep us well attached,
filing away the roughened edges that
we all in common posses, and like
jigsaw pieces, we finish each other’s sentences, and we emote satisfaction
with smiles, laughs, sighs and sarcastic
groans, our words grasp, connect and

ease is in the air, there but for this grace,
we go together, you and I,
sailing away from
troubled waters
8:19pm 11/11/24
Can we
hang on
can we
be good
can we
hold on
can we
be strong
can we
breathe on
can we
feel on
can we
live on
can we
against the odds
still believe
can we
still  breathe
on?
Next page