They were not interested in the forests.
Or how many Asians died?
Nam Viet was a restaurant
Open from 8am-11pm each day.
And summertime in Hue,
means cheap ***** and handmade suits.

All around the girls in golden tight dresses,
who can hardly walk in their six inch heels.
Sell cheap cigarettes from table to table.
Always with a smile and a look at their *******.

On trips to Hanoi and Hoi An,
the code to Vietnam's  literary treasure.
They asked thin questions with no light
“What about the Women Andrew”
“What about the nightlife and the girls”
“Do you think they’re ****?”
"How expensive are they?"

Someone in ** Chi Minh City asked me
"Why do people think like this?"

I guess it is easy, if ugly is all you know
Calling to nothing, and the fall of the future.

Raining down everywhere
Autumn tastes bittersweet by the river.
I want to paint the land in abstract
Subtle lines of a new day.
To delight and inebriate the few that call for courage.
But a whisper of cloud takes forever to appear.
And dead leaves are piled up in corners blown by a strange wind.
I wonder, what keeps them there?

The shallow water of the River Fen flows to impress,
But the warmth has now gone.
A heart sunk in mourning and bleakness comes without sound.
I see the couples walk by hand in hand, unaware of the bitter
sweet breeze that blows from winters harsh advance.

The old man walks alone days of youth in his heart,
But he looks back without sadness, without nostalgia.
A life simplified of images, and now he is able to
comprehend the world.
But who wants to know this?

As for me, I will keep on drifting away,
Or break up into many parts,
But I remain who I am!
Searching for you in this land of drifting souls.

Sometimes strange things happen.
In the afternoon mostly, after lunch and rest.

Today in was the morning.
A communist asked me

" Did I know the difference between Chinese communism and Vietnamese communism"?

To be honest..I did not.

This is the first time I had been asked this question.
A new experience.
I sensed a passion, a desire for me to answer.
We ascend from time-to-time.
So I said

" The characterization of the struggle"

I put effort into this.
Attention and love.
Was the communist satisfied?
I don't know

But we all learn to do necessary things.

A liquid wind blows across fertile loss-covered landscapes.
Seducing and touching, enticing me into a silent embrace.
How does love continue to love in a place like this?

I saw you waiting, looking at the men swimming in the ***** dead water. A faint smile from an old woman, her eyes half closed and fingers bent. The sounds of traffic and voices over the bridge.

I kissed you, and you moaned slightly, the first moment of the world. As the veil of winter grunted along the river bank and the dark clouds began to sing.

Now the trees have too much knowledge in grief. But  I remember the faint-like layers of your eyes and everything that was close to my face.

Dear State Counsellor.

Once I saw you as an icon of morality.
A bastion of hope.
A ‘dancing peacock’ in a troubled world.
Some called you the ‘midwife of democracy’.
Others an ‘Oxford housewife’,
a peacock ready to show its eyes.

But now….

The Children, babies, women and men of the Rohingya
are butchered, ***** and murdered by your
soldiers as you read poetry to children.

And the rest of the world stands by waiting for
the Norwegians to take away your Nobel Peace Prize.
Another sense of justice, lost again.

The working hands of the Muslim men in Rakhine
are tied by the Buddhists, the lovers of peace.

Their guns gleaming and your army standing by.

“It wasn’t us” say the Generals
“It was the Buddhists”.

But of course we have seen this before.
At Srebrenica, Nanking, My Lai and Auschwitz,
until the gas came.

And the world stands by.
Another failure, another genocide.

Now, as your military load the death carts
and bury mothers next to their children.
The Buddhists place flowers on the mass graves.
And I call for you and your ‘men’
to be accountable for those burnt by the sun.

The two young lovers looked at me

'' What are you writing"?

" A rhythm of pounding words" I told them.

Bustling in this sticky season.
Tormented by a deep longing.
And nights of making love
in still life silence.

There’s fire outside, fire in my apartment.
Swelling in this humidity.
More uncomfortable than Vietnam.
It is not easy to hide.
Even sitting on the roof writing poems,
there is fire.

A thousand words yet to write,
a thousand words yet to write.
Thoughtful girls with their umbrellas.
Dancing dragonflies,
ascending and descending.
Like a madness of Sisyphus.

And then the sounds of this fire.
The bedroom sounds, a taste that will last forever.
The sounds of the late night Baijiu drinkers,
trying to find the garden of love.
And the unrequited who cry alone at 2a.m
Endless, embracing with a glad sadness.

That is the fire in this city.

Why do people become angry?
Sadness, a sense of injustice…
Who knows.
An air hostess is angry with a passenger.

Anger is an energy.
The air hostess cries,
But still wants to get her point across.
I guess that is why people become angry.

Tracts of land
inhabited by people
A flower, a hero
or revolution.
To define a country is easy.
A pulse of a nation
** Chi Minh.
Defeat of the French,
the Americans.
But what about the prisons?

French prisons
American prisons
Vietnamese prisons.
15 years in Con Dao
6 years in the Hanoi Hilton.
Voices that still echo to this day.

And now the pen,
to free the corridors of our minds.
Diaries, letters
kept close
Inside a cold place.

Now they tell the world
that doors are closed.
And freedom is there.

We move on.

Overslept and tired.
An early start
17 hours a day.
Broken with slashes of sound.
7.43 million Motorbikes in
** Chi Minh City.

The street flowers dying,
no air to breath.
And miles to go before you sleep.
The grass consenting to the dollar,
packs up and leaves the city.

Returning, resuming,
threading your way between
the grey faces.
And the men looking for
someone special today.

The hurt and wounded
pass by quickly.
No soothing hand to pacify
the restless all dark nights.
Some suffer so much.

Sleepy now
Too many hours
walking the streets
of Hanoi.

I would rather a life of poetry.
Thank bashing about
these humid days
without a breeze.

Have you read the news today

44 Texans dead, 32 000 in shelters
Withering and falling like an autumn leaf in this season of grief.
Warm memories left to shed light into the darkness.
Bitter cold sadness consumes a nation.
Each day the news reports the loss  
of your gentle understanding ways.

But what of the others who's stories need to be told?

In the same season 1,200 people fought
for every breath they took, 40 million people
feel the pain of isolation as the tears of heaven fall
down in India, Nepal, Bangladesh , Pakistan and places
not easily found on the classroom walls in Bose, Idaho.

One dead in Texas equals 10 dead in London equals 100 dead in Turkey equals 1000 dead in Pakistan equals 10,000 dead in China.
Media coating news like sugar on a rotten apple
High arts to disfigure truth and news
Much easier to know about Kim Kardashian's Cher-Inspired Photo Shoot, than ask why  Colin Kaepernick cannot play football?


Have you read the news today?

My neighbour invited me to a party today
for a man who died three years ago.
I did not know the man.
Was he famous?
Did he hurt people?
Or was he just a man in the wind?

He was a relative of my neighbour.
They gathered to celebrate and remember his life.
I wondered if anyone would come to celebrate and remember me when I die?

As I look who will I see drinking Belgium beer and talking about my poetry?
Will anyone say 'He was a man of constant sorrow, but a good father?

So I watched the people eat and drink and thought about my own death.
When will the shadows close in.
Will I begin to notice?
What will I feel?

So many people are abandoned in despair. Holding thoughts that no person should possess alone.
Wanting something better.
Death can seem an answer.

My neighbour offered my some Baijiu.
I smiled and politely say 'no thank you'.
The last thing I needed was to think about my own death and drink Baijiu!

As I left, still searching for my soul, I realised again, that weak winds and silent structures are all around us.
It is the small margin of moments, the walk through time that give us a chance of a good death.

I dreamt last night that I was Angus Young,
and then I was Bruce Springsteen
suspended in my masquerade
and open to pain.

Then, I saw you
as eyes should see you at last.
The way I wanted to see you,
a key to the universe…..
a beginning quietly forming.

Snap, snap, snap.

Filter out the sadness.
Love me, adore me
Feed me.
When the thrill is gone
I am still missing life.
It's not a problem
just trying to get
the right one.
Bleeding pigments of pink.
Society pushing,
am I too fat.
Portraits of hate
feeding tyranny.
Nostalgic filter
and the potency of
myth is addictive.
How to hide my soul
when I am king.
I can stop

Snap, snap, snap.

Going into the unknown again
I still think about you
Falling in love with me
Loving me more than life itself
I loved you the same.
You left a footprint on my heart
Now my heart feels like it's torn in two
Each day more fear
Each day another tear
One day I sensed something was fading between you and I
Our bodies merely rubbing together
A dead language between us
Feelings piling up
Many felt that something different was going on
Bare branches that spoke of sins
Night of the dark trees
No utterances from the dead limbs

Only lost souls baring witness
To the song
That grows for a man’s lost soul.
If I could ask you again
“Do you still love me
as much as you used to?”
What would you say?

Sensuous pleasure
Human touch

I close my eyes
Darken hue

A stampede of thoughts
Streams of consciousness

Springsteen in Asbury Park
Aung San Sun kyi, a lost voice

Meeting with a philosopher
American friends

Judge Judy
And Poetic license

International conflicts
Blame the Russians

Rooney drink driving
Racist police and the NFL

PhD students
And Noam Chomsky

R.E.M
'The End Of the World as We know it'

BREXIT
Blame anyone but yourself

A mother giving birth in the street
To poor for St. Elsewhere

North Korea
Blame the Chinese

The beautiful woman next to me
Another day in paradise.

The man said something
Now the other foot.

Oliver Mtukudzi died today.
My friend said
“So what….many singers die, it’s inevitable”
But I have a lingering mind…

Long before the shadows came,
and love was stolen from us.
We would listen to his music
and rainbows stood in a moment.

Oliver Mtukudzi died today…..

When alone, I think
I've lived half a life.
A small corner of the noise.
Half a fish.
Half, come winter.
A small white canvas, unfinished.
Smaller, and more smaller.

So Shanxi TV want to interview me.
This is my chance.
To say something that people will
never forget.

" In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes" said Andy Warhol, well I have less time than him.

If you had five minutes of fame
what would you say?
You have waited all your life
for this moment.
The cameras are on you
and the world is waiting.

What would you say?

Would you speak of those
who fall into hell or those who
fall into heaven?

Maybe you would tell the world
that you love your country, but
dreamed last night that the dogs of
Fenyang barked no more.

Or maybe like Ji Xianlin, you would say something about growing flowers for the benefit of all.

What would you say?

So they have found you guilty,
Pinochet’s lover of darkness,
for ending my life tonight.
A football stadium, bodies piled up,
no football today, a perverted game.
Pedro Pablo Barrientos Nunez
how did you learn to terrorize,
to think in ways most men don't think,
to live with walls draped with fingernails?

Now you live in the land of the free,
with 10,000 tortured ghosts,
from El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras
and all the rest of the disappeared lands,
that refused to listen to Reagan and Thatcher’s
heritage as patriots.

But we are unafraid to speak up,
or sing out for equality, or write
about the dens of sorrow your kind create.
You took the butchers knife and listened
to the screams, in spite of love in Santiago.
But now the silent dead will have their day,
and tell the world of those 10,000 lost kisses,
as we begin the long march to the sea.

In the pattern of shadows,
the chanter sings from the
memories of the birds.
Of swollen tears
and half-moon yearnings.

But I could see
the white of your neck.
As you lifted your hair to me,
to taste your standing form
and beauties slow curve.

Deep and dark now
whalebone and winter rain.
Thin plates to enlarge the circle,
a hand to the sky.

Unafraid, a black bird
watches me approach.
Trees shift, and gulls turn the day
no other words come.

Silent friends meeting,
the sound of chairs being moved ,in and out.
Tears in silver foil litter the ground
and white wind eyes darken the mood.

I look at the rain shadow and distant virga,
razored through and losing its name.
And yet, a fleeting symbol of life
a returning sea, seducing the summer sun.

The young woman asked me
“Why are you a poet?"
It was not a difficult question to answer.

I told her about the world being silent,
but for the gentle sound of a warming wind and the fluttering rain.

She looked confused.
Her eyes, so expressive
like a dangling drop of dew.

So I told her
“I am just glad to open-up and meet the thoughts of the past"

I often think about the how I became a poet.
All those years of reading, when nobody
was nearly interested.

My father was a romantic.
He could read aloud poems by
Keats, Shelley and Byron.
I couldn’t understand any of it, I doubt he could.
But it sounded good.

I settled into a life,
evoked of love and steadfast promises.
And discovered Neruda and personal
colours of hope.

But in life
the dark mornings always come.
Just listen to the coughs,
and the blood stained phlegm of cancer
You will know what I mean.
Then I found Bukowski
and began to see
that being a fool is normal.
And **** happens in life.

“I am a writer” he said.
At least he endured trying.

So now….. I get out of bed
and I write poems.

Sometimes a painful submission of words,
that almost every poet thinks.
But that’s normal…..
at least for me.

Today is the first of September
The end of summer in Taiyuan
Hopes of love expired, summer lapsed away
Too impeccable to last.

The crickets put their songbooks away
The long march over for another year
Hearts moving, yet without a dream
Their music web will sing a different tune.

One last walk by the Fen
and memories of dizziness.
Faintly the steps begin to grieve
each one heavy with the waning light.

And now the cold kiss of a Shanxi winter
invites me to walk by its placid stream.
And drink its cooling breath
More vivid than the sunsets final glow.

The past is a glacier that grips the mountain wall
And history is formed in our hands.
The bars in this prison do not concern me
I look out from the window and what do I see.
Invisible tears for all the years lost in a frozen sea.
Words in turmoil dance in my mind.
The darkness of El Hecho
And the hopes of Long Kesh
Now I am unable to touch.

The Treasury underfunds the National Health Service,
and you report that Taylor Swift, embodies
the values of Trump, while chemotherapy
drips over the ****** floor.

Norwegian police uncover more than
150 rapes and ****** assaults in Lapland,
and you tell us about another royal wedding,
another fade to white by blissful deceit.

What was once true, now no longer rebellion,
for those that struggle against the indifference of lies,
and a world of comforting illusion, that transgress the
victims soul.

Once truth was there to learn. now consent is black and white,
gender and experienced forced - a spectrum of gradual extinction,
no longer seeing things as they are - just as we are.

Seated musings of dim thoughts creeping day by day,
as Harvard professors, whose fierce words
are now confined to late night masquerades,
give you nothing to entice your mind.

Now in these solitary years, consent is left to perish,
a universe of want, as the Pope watches lifeless children
float by and the beautiful people smile.

I was looking for information of any kind
And met a man who said he can contact the dead
Just walking by the hospital
I was ready to leave
“You feel too deeply’
How can I not hear
The sleepless souls
Who lost their shape
Under the weight
Of sins dark shadow
“I haven’t told you anything yet”
Just fragments
Time and future have no image
Not one, of all the people
Challenged the silence

Walking ashes of the dead
Trying to act casual
Now just talking dust
“Can’t you smell the scattered echoes?”
That we should not hear at this time
Is there a bloodier crime

The last fish in the Fen
Wounded all over
I tried not to see
But he was dying

The burnt horizon of the Taihang Mountains
Disappears beyond cold grey winds.

...Your earth. Your river. Your life
I did not ask
Do the dead have names?

Deep cold in a dream,
dim sunlight splits
the winter moon.
A few flakes of snow,
hard to see.
Echo a spring longing,
that lies on a Chinese street.

Migu's Coffee Cafe
Just by Xinhua's Book Shop
Is a place I know well
A place to be seen for the ****
To loose yourself in a dream
When you leave your native road

Through the window I can see the faded
yellow paint of the buildings.
They are always darker in winter.
They remind me of leaves falling
on a cold Manchester Autumn morning.
Full of parting  and lingering pain.
Holding on to the last days of summer.

Now I see your face
In a nest broken by angry voices
Too afraid to tread on the flowers
I could not help you.

A life at 22 always looks different at 52 even in Taiyuan.
We once talked of babies and forever
Now I focus on the pain
The only thing that is real.

I met two Vietnamese
men this morning,
just outside my hotel.
They invited me to drink tea
and flexed about philosophy.

One of them told me that
Le Quy Don was the greatest scholar
that Vietnam has produced.

The other one disagreed
and wanted to tell me about
Tran Duc Thao

“He’s a Marxist and traitor”
Said Le Quy Don’s man.
I just drank some tea and listened.

Now some say how can this be?
You cannot speak Vietnamese,
and their English is poor.

So I tell them I keep searching the streets
and I wonder about words.
And the next thing is that everything is still there.
A blast of colour is a silent world.

I wanted words to drop on my head
"Topic sentences" he said
Last of the new poets
The last one on this side of the world
But he was speaking another language
I tried to conjure up words
Henry V at Agincourt
Dr King in Washington
'A Hard Rains Gonna Fall'
From some town hall
Words, words, words
I don't know what to write.
My brain has no way with words
Dylan says ' It's hard, it's hard and
it's hard...I know!
But he says 'I can'
He tells me about Sylvia Plath and
Ernest Hemingway
And Three Hundred Tang Poems
And something stared in my soul
A story of forgotten words
"Write" he said.
I began to make my own way.

Old church doors
across the street.
Not creaking for anyone.

The Songhua River,
quite through bare trees….
never quite full.

Yet faintly, between the space,
a dutar plays a song.

A small patch of grass
surprises me as I turn.

Now I am grown-up
I am not supposed to daydream.
But I do.

I looked up 'daydreaming' on my phone, whilst drinking coffee in M.Gateau's. The Urban Dictionary said:

" A condition that occurs when one is in deep thought while looking in the same direction for a long time".

But I never look in the same direction for long
When I do it evokes the deepest desires. Beautiful women walking the streets, waiting for the midnight hour, so they can indulge in living.

And as for deep thoughts?

Well, last night I dreamt again that nothing mattered anymore. Including writing poetry. Until then my day was going great.

Now I haven't moved my eyes from the pavement. Gazing at the street shadows made by the sun rays - they are everywhere.

Shadows are like this.
They take over space that we create.
And that is it for the day.

They come in secret when we are not looking and we can not face ourselves alone.

Now I wonder who you think you will see?
I just hope it is me.
Time for another coffee.

Can you save me from the man I tend to be?
The spirit of the Thälmann Battalion is in my soul
Reading the radical poets
And having conversations with myself.

Can you save me from the man I tend to be?
I listen to Billy Bragg and dream of  a ‘New England’
Dennis Skinner is a hero.
All that is left of the English radical dissenting left.

Can you save me from the man I tend to be?
Fear provokes anxiety and silence.
Never can I do without thinking.
Or creating intuitive minds

Can you save me from the man I tend to be?
Seeing consent manufactured day-by-day
Conversations with Noam Chomsky
On violations of authority.

Do I need saving from the man I tend to be?’

We woke each morning
Mapping our lives across the bedroom wall
Cobwebs in the corner
A new conscience nagged
Home was home

We fell mute
In the shadows of winter mornings
This is the best kind of love

Now there is so much
I want to see once more
And the silent rambles by the Fen
Make me fall again
And smell the scent of your hair

Memories of our time together.

It began around 11pm, the dog barking.
A locked in bark, a left alone bark.
It sounded like pain breaking,
for no reason.

After a while,
I wanted to tell the dog to ‘shut-up’
But then…I changed my mind
I wanted to ask the dog
‘What it knew about pain’?
But the time was not right.
And maybe,
there was no escape.

Back in Xinxiang
the coffee tastes good.
'The Carpenters' are signing about love,
which becomes lost in time.
Never to be smooth again.

Deep inside, a spring longing.
A shadow still wedged between the rocks, and the rising spring river.
Seared into my aching bones.
Always to linger,
and never to be free.

The music stops, it always does.
Vaguely, I hear a sound....
        ..... a sweet voice
..... a distant voice
“Come close, and follow me.....”

Pulled into a violet world,
surrounded by the noise of our origin.
I see you...
and my unfinished flight.

A slow river flows in Taiyuan, the current always hidden.
And as a winter breeze blows coldly and coldly,
the queen-woman hides her face, the stillness exactly as before.

Oh, slow river, you are so lonely and pale in light now.
Only a flimsy sun to keep you company.
The odd rain cannot hide your water like tenderness.

Drifting rare flowers, relics of the long march float toward your banks, layered into clusters of yellow gold alluvium and images of illusion.

A river I have under my breath, a natural gift from an almighty.
But shared by the old women who pat the lines in our hands and tell our futures, silent flows, each day.

Where are they now
those Ravens of Wilmslow
Who turned the world upside down
refusing to live by artificial light.

Their flesh bitterly primed
On the damp dark Cheshire plains.
Red flags drawn across their eyes
Blood sputtering with disdain.

A moment of war

We showed the world what can be done
and how to fly through the sky
When the thin December gleam is
is driven out by those who stay silent
when the snow falls.

Now my heart beats faster at the
suffocating silence that is all around
me.