Winter is here now in Taiyuan,
deserted banks of the River Fen.

I had stories to tell, about damming souls
and ducks still trying to find reasons to believe.

I wonder is water enjoyed by everyone.
And think of you still.

How do you characterize the whispering that is all around,
sometimes savage and sometimes urgent.
But always present in this tortured grove.

How do you acknowledge the pain and suffering
that lies along the river stem, the scars of brave ideas
and towers of dried and lifeless earth.

How to challenge the cursed indifference of those
whose minds are bound by walls of silence, whispered words
and love that promises.

I look around and feel I can’t stand alone
And if I live to be a hundred
We will look at them, at this great yesterday and know that we tried.

That’s how it starts

With you at my side, You and I,
With your lips touching mine, your lips
We can catch the moments in this desert

To bring light to all that once was dark.

I often sit in Migu’s in ceaseless memory.
A face devoid of thought or love.

Two old friends meeting again
remembering how the summer shone
Now to make winter by the Fen.

The women steps lightly into this place
Her pretty face pitiful in this silence.
I want to ask her ‘Are you alone?’

But now the noiseless dark descends
and punctuates the dead sleep of this cold grave.

I walked in Jinci Park today, listening to the echoes of the past wandering around the papered walls with memories of death open and unnamed.
 
Amid the cracked curtained windows and hurried echoes of the last battle, I saw three horsemen about to siege the winter.
 
Once their tempers and coming swords passed into times earth. Now their striding spirit vents noxious words to the ungainly tailless lizards who want a time when nobody thought.
 
Interpretations differ, but I said ‘Come and see’. Then I heard what sounded like a voice and saw the horsemen dancing under fire, lightning and thunder singing around them, hurried by the mountain and waiting for the sun to crush the day.
 
If it is true, and in this place I think it is, that letters and words are strange and urgent, then the siege of the cities is lost.
 
And what of freedoms vanguard and voices that merge with memories. What of words like bullets and thoughts as simple as death.
 
Forget them at your peril.
 
Imbalances can be corrected, heroines of great objectors created.
 
I walked in Jinci Park today, caught up in the spirit, the old trees whispered "Look around they are the last”. This was my temporary home and I was one of the last souls.

Lost in a clarion of whispering voices.
Mao Dun says that ‘you have the right to promote your own happiness’
Just like everyone else.
Weapons of mass consumption litter the streets
People afraid to ask why we are bereft of ideas
Left or right
Dark alleyways come alive with the words of Bob Dylan  
“How does it feel?
How does it feel?
To be without a home…..”

A place of constant energy
And personal experience
A sight nurtured to glorious vision
Now can only see translated images.
Faded to leave us in the dark
And questions of vulnerability, depth and analysis.
Have become a solemn species

Paths of beauty destroyed
By the wind blowing through their black world
A constant search for blindness
To fulfill their empty lives

Going anywhere is enough

But I am full of the ecstasy of life
Loud and clear streets

Knowledge, an unconstrained heaven
Often comes with showers of sound
From obscurity of thought
Gleams a star

A wind of change.

I heard a story today of
Dead bodies dancing in Madagascar
Of ignorance lingering
And political faith put to the test

New conceptions like another Sunday
Void of inspiration and
Poets of drowsy thoughts
Drowning below the fractured surface

A poet is always lost in translation
Too many unknown houses
Too many cosmopolitan pacifists
Shouting at blank TV screens

I had a story once
On truth, necessity,
And scientific hypotheses
The darkness swallowed everything
As the dancing ladies sang
The asylums emptied.

On the dull paths by the river
No graffiti of love
I take a deep sworn vow
To look death in the face
No matter what the dance
No matter what the consequences

This is the shape of things to come
A lack of poets, who sing,
Not to the burdensome face of beauty
But the drifting bodies
You never let settle around you.

How do you characterize a story?

Would you be the sun or the moon?
I would be the moon
No one grows tired of the moon

Imperfect body
A dark side
Often hidden
All alone
Cloaks of silence
In a sea of stars

Peeking into the soul
In its North West scenery night
Old men know when there is no light.

A sorrowful woman who no longer
has to pretend, in the presence of the moon.

I am different from the sun

But she is devoted to me
We found comfort in the darkness
Mirrored in your being

I would be the moon.
I am the moon on Earth

James Corden says
275 days and 11,660 people
died from gun violence
in America.
But I am not American
Shocking to me.
Don’t talk about
Five people shot in Kansas
Three dead
No news from Kansas today
When from the deep sky
Thoughts as simple as death
Words as hard as bullets
You will pile into the deep sky
And splash people to death
Before you see the unruly back roads
Of  your thoughts.

Wake-up and see your blood and mine
Are mingled.
From Las Vegas to Manchester
We give up the same breath
Metal from which the bullets are made
Before the greed of hollow men.

I the bird this morning
Standing on my windowsill
Confident and proud
A soul dancing in heaven
Lost in a lyrical dream.
The end of the grasslands
And stone becomes stone.

To sad to mourn it raised its
head to an imaginary sky.
Bringing darkness to a
momentary sun.

It serves the people,
never stopping
A one-time-hero

The dissatisfied
Those that wear tattered
uniforms
All ask
'What else there might be'
And climb to play the hero.

Standing still for ten seconds
But 10 seconds can be longer
An interval between the course
of war.

Now on the road again.

When the black dogs are massed against the dawn

What does it matter that no one listens to your chronicles of time.

Or remembers the low cold sky, that left you dark.

To you a room is a cell and those that sleep by the Fen have no tears for those who stay.

In this place there is a cruel famine of ideas, and each morning holds off its sunshine and birdsong.

In another place, far away a voice says that stars will fall from heaven. If not stars then dawns that will dazzle in your eyes.

The thing that I call living is just being satisfied.

I tell you world that I am me
With a thousand challenges
every day.
SAD, CONFUSED, ALONE
OCEANS OF TEARS
Ten years after I was born
I still think of you
I don't know what else there might be
Only me
I always try to smile when the foreigners visit
I wonder if they can see just the anger in me
What more can I know
They say I was loved
But I don't why
You moved far away
You are a mother
A mother of two
But I no longer see my brother
And think of how we could have been
I wonder if you can see
What my mummy did to me.

Last night I was told it was the end of the world.
So I listened to R.E.M  just to tempt fate.
There was no earthquake.
Just thousands of white faces serving their own needs.

But there was a sudden blackness.

A moment when the stars where cancelled,
and I could see the last woman walking with
dignity along the dead banks of the Fen River.

At that moment I knew my fate.
I had always know this.
Emerson wrote " Deep in the man sits fast his fate".

But I refuse to sit still, to allow fate to become my master.

A living being, a chance to begin the proverbial new life, a back hole to start again.
The last kiss alone, remembering all.

Mankind is out but I am still here.

This is my fate.

11am from Taiyuan to Beijing.
Trees and buildings rushing by.
First Shijiazhuang then Gaobeidiandong.

A drizzling rain falls  like an early morning sadness. People in the city waiting for connections.

You asked me to show you meaning.
I looked at my phone.
That is all I need to know today.

Beijing is approaching
Yet you are so far away.
Endless buildings of delight and sadness.

And Du Mu asks " Where can a wine shop be found"?

The best place to
see life in Taiyuan
is to sit on the street.

Just by XueFu Park
on Tiyu road.

The arteries of the
city grasping for
space and meaning.
Husbands too tired to talk.
Wives waiting  for the next
episode.

Fireflies searching
for a neon light
Street cleaners who read
Hemingway.
Dancing ladies who
sing the old songs.

Taiyuan is alive
at night.

Once the Fen can breathe
no more and the dancing
ladies have lost their words,

Many more will sit by and watch
the shadows of their past reclaim
the streets of Taiyuan.

Unable to
move for fear of uncertainty.

Tonight I went to the park.

And saw a man who lived a life beyond life
Known to no one.

All of which delighted me.

In trivial movements that mean
a lived memory.

I saw too many who mourn a life too tamely spent.

Look longer, deeper now with accustomed eyes.

Just quick appearances but that is enough.

To show the fools that some men are giants
no longer chained down from the skies.