Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
 
162 · Dec 2018
Winter Music
Andrew Duggan Dec 2018
In deep winter, it is easy to be lost.
The uneven edges of life,
exposed by the cold hurried snow
leave little space between the stars.
Only the counted poems seem to matter.

I can envision loves, deep night
and the shapeliness
of lines borrowed from the past.
These lines of verse,
taut and unrepentant
offer the sun to my bones.
And the snow gathers on….
Andrew Duggan Nov 2017
When the insects sleep
the wounds heal.
Silent knife, I hate you
for what you try to subjugate,
the women of all lands.
Persuasions, to no avails
,
my body a punching bag.
Beautiful diamonds,
no longer carry your traditions.
I am leaving now,
this cant be living.

No longer receiving,
your pains and sorrows.
The blows from you,
will hurt no more.
160 · Jul 2017
Leon
Andrew Duggan Jul 2017
It is 20:17 in Dunhuang, at least CCTV 13 says so.
I met a girl called 'Mathilda'

She offered me some Chicken soup.
And we talked about Jean Reno.

I asked her " Is it possible that a plant can be a friend?"
She smiled and told me that '"The killer is not so cold"
Currently traveling in Gansu Province in China. Came across a cafe themed with paintings from the film 'Leon'.
158 · Oct 2017
Migu's Lament
Andrew Duggan Oct 2017
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.
Migu;s is a cafe in Taiyuan, China. I often go there for a coffee and reflection.
157 · Nov 2017
Silent Hutong
Andrew Duggan Nov 2017
Alone in a hutong.
Siheyuan, an empty space.
Agnostic ghosts speak as one.
Each has left something behind.
It is grief to me, that spirit once free,
now goes bound.
Silver flies all around echoing voices.
The derelict long lost.
153 · Oct 2017
Take Me In
Andrew Duggan Oct 2017
I miss you in the morning.
Listening to the song of your soul.
The curves of your hips and *******
Just flesh and blood.
Our passion spent.
Your body’s breath
teasing me with its nearness
No marks of your departure
No signs of the weary end.
I imagine that this is
the only living thing
in this wounded desolate place.

I miss you in the morning
153 · May 2018
International Labour Day.
Andrew Duggan May 2018
It's been a long cold winter.
A biting wind from the West.
The light in the leaves
finds a desolate wall.

The workers, who sing the blues.
Do you stop to listen?

The sanitary worker,
the taxi driver.
The farmer's hands,
and industrial workers.

Neon promises mean nothing.
Sleeping by the river,
fending off the blues.
Sub-health and sub-city
Constant companions.

In a well rehearsed voice.
With a melancholy tone.
They sing.....

' Nobody knows the trouble I've seen'

And the weary blues  
echo inside their heads.
Over and over again.
149 · Sep 2017
How to live a cruel life?
Andrew Duggan Sep 2017
Alone I was wondering
To the end of a narrow way
Back to my empty room
The tears of the Fen falling
Your beauty prefigured

Once we made fire in the air.
And after my intolerable self thrived
You saw through my disguise
And still loved me.
As if the moment will never pass.

A world of patterns and light
But I walked towards the silhouettes
Feeling unworthy of atonement,
And now I weep for the loss of you
No songs can ease my troubled insight.
149 · Apr 2018
6am in Xinxiang
Andrew Duggan Apr 2018
6am in Xinxiang
Only the ants,
hardworking, lovesick and confused
occupy the spaces
between the common lines.
The street lights shine
in the black gutter by the road.

The moon, in constant conflct,
still up in the morning.
Greets the eye as reflections blaze.

And me,  still on my bed,
I look through my window.
The same still things,
Hopes in shining light
right outside these bars.

The few stars left, punctuate
this blissful solitude.
Time alone to heal
I lost so much in so little time.
149 · Oct 2017
Rain in Taiyuan
Andrew Duggan Oct 2017
Raining in Taiyuan
A kind of rapture
Waiting to rise into the sky
Her only dream was menacing fanaticism of love
A constant companion
Like tinnitus of the night
Always singing, a constant companion

Crawling in search of understanding
She died long ago
Remnants of herself
And torrents of whispers
Weight of loss, weight of guilt
A vacuum of memories
Draining into the city sewer.

So much left undone
No voice to shout now
The girl you used to know
Walking by the Fen River
Bodies lie in the undrinkable water
Disputing the time of the event.
149 · Oct 2017
LOOKING FOR IDENTITY
Andrew Duggan Oct 2017
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.
146 · Sep 2018
The Beauty of War
Andrew Duggan Sep 2018
Last night, I walked by the relics.
The last of the violent beasts.
Small and damaged now.
Filled with anxious, mounting fear.
The last know speakers of a dead language.

Now exquisite neon figurines,
talk slithering sounds, and horses sleep alone.
The raucous rivers lament the frivolous tunes
and silent broadcasts.

And the poets, who thought
that success followed desire.
Write to complain about the loss of poetic form.
And the death of odes to love.
144 · Oct 2018
The Pain of Lost Love
Andrew Duggan Oct 2018
In a dark human forest
I swore
I would never
love or believe
again.

Anger, drink
and mistrust
was my daily life.
A new friend.

You ask me why I find
it hard to trust, to love
even after all these years.

Easy to forgive
and forget, right!

Because, I am haunted
more by her memories
than new Chinese dreams.
I am the distant drums
of a distant love lost.
144 · Oct 2018
What I need to know
Andrew Duggan Oct 2018
Some jobs you like,
and others are so dreary and pitiless,
that you stay in bed.
Motionless in time and
watching the sun climb.

But then,
many who stay in bed
have a history of grief.
An empty doorway,
and a faded family photograph.

Nothing to do with their job,
just tricks of the mind.
Memory by memory,
it is easy to forget that what’s here isn’t life.
And nothing can ever happen unless you say so.
130 · Sep 2017
On the Road.
Andrew Duggan Sep 2017
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.
129 · Aug 2017
Moments in Taiyuan
Andrew Duggan Aug 2017
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.
127 · Oct 2017
Voices
Andrew Duggan Oct 2017
At the beginning I noticed nothing,
too many stones by the dead river.
No gratitude for truth or beauty
Those I loved gone.

I felt like an illegitimate child
walking across an invisible border.
Rejected by its parents,
no one left, a black world.

A kite dived in front of me
I thought it was a sign
The corpse of a dead idea I once had.
Then I saw you, the last of your kind.

Obeying time as before and unknown to myself,
I listened to your voice
To you, a room is a cell of unreadable books
subtle and grey in the morning light.

As the clouds gathered over Mt. Wutai
You whispered in my ear
Nature now came close.
And brought back what I had lost long ago.
126 · Nov 2017
To Walk Alone
Andrew Duggan Nov 2017
A silent walk to MGateau’s.
My own journey.
I hear their voices loud,
I hear their voices clear
Sinking in the dreams of others.
Faint sounds, all a faraway distance.
Some memories are left here.
Layers twisted into fold.
A walk to a cafe in Taiyuan.
126 · Jul 2017
The Death of Spain.
Andrew Duggan Jul 2017
Today I went for coffee at M.Gateau's
'Yesterday Once More' was on the radio
Children running around in pink shirts,
twins I think.
Few elements of distrust.

I met a woman who knew about Karen Carpenter
Filled with fear at every bite she took
A deceitful relationship.

I met a man who said stars will fall from heaven
He told me he dreamt of missed connections
And misheard echoes of the past.

I met an old solider who said he had fought at Jarama
And tried to teach the children that he was not untrue.
I asked him about the death of Spain.

In another place - a place different from this
It would be easy to shut my eyes to war.

But then who would care for the children who have forgotten their dolls? And the poor who travel by night under the gaze of the great bear?

It is my choice to open my eyes and see the reflections in the mirror. The cursed indifference of all those who do nothing whilst  parents worry about their children dancing strange steps.

Now I show my fist until the pain has passed into time's earth.
And the lonely man can dance without rhythm.
120 · Nov 2017
Who Was I Before You?
Andrew Duggan Nov 2017
It’s early in the morning the sun dimly white,  thin air on the Taiyuan rooftops. Frozen thoughts swim to the dry banks of the River Fen, locked and clattered in the same broken run.

Why did you stay, but not forever? A constant companion sang the cat. A perfect octave in a moment of intervals, between margins of half-heard music and the last light of unclear whispers.

I’ve been wounded in so many nights, a hallmark of all the hidden places.  Like a sleepless boy who hates his bed, something of this slow fading is impossible to forget.

From my window I can see clouds breaking the morning - turning to see your shy-flushed face, that carries the shreds of a dream that I can't remember. Delicate spaces between us - I love you.
98 · Nov 2017
Plum Blossom in Taiyuan.
Andrew Duggan Nov 2017
Will you remember this conversation?
How words and music bridged our minds.
For what I have lost, so much was gained
in those moments of starting stories.
Once I heard and answered all the questions,
and spoke the language of plum blossom flowers.
Bearing apricot sweet dreams and craving spring,
we pressed each petal between the pages,
a singular beauty captured in a moment.
Now an old soul, who has paid time,
I share conversations with the night time creatures,
who have too much silence between the words,
and refuse to let you see all that has gone.
But out of pity and remorse,
they are given light by the moon and the stars.
I can see the night come down around them
and wait for each soul alone, it is enough to frighten me.
Now I pay more attention to sunlight bright
on the Fen river, than describing a sun that shines after death
and a world in silent pact unwilling to scatter it’s immortal seeds.
And as each petal vanishes, the day becomes darker.

— The End —