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.

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.

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.

Today, our first “All About Me” writing class begins.
What do I write about?
Too political
Too sporting
Too much poetry
Too much AC/DC
Too much love at first sight.

I wanted to write about truth.

But too many people in this place have sworn to me that they are made of truth.

Now I feel in myself that I represent falsehoods.

So I asked the professor a question
“Can I write about the truth?”
He told me that the path from error to truth
is difficult.  

I wondered about the friendly shadows
And how long it will take for messages of faith
to be sent back

I knew what to write about.

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.

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.

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.

“Do you write about love like Neruda?”

“Do you understand the nature of immortality
like Dickinson?”

“Have you read Robert Frost and Wallace Stevens?
“They are American you know?”

“What do you think of Dylan Thomas?”
“Oh…..but he is Welsh”

“And what about Sylvia Plath and the confessional
movement?”
“She a woman, but an American woman right”

“Of course we cannot not accept you,
unless you tell us about Whitman and the
American epic”.

“Oh yes… one more thing.
We don’t want any poems that
caustically indict bourgeois poetic values
or celebrate the desperate……
like that Bukowski fellow”.

OK?

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.

The nurse asked me about pain
“Does it rain” I told her.

Most days
I am in pain.
It falls upon my soul,
and devours my dreams.

It is a friend, a close friend
A pristine memory,
somewhere in darkened land.

I don't ask its name,
it has no name worth knowing.

But I wish the pain to be stranger
and fly like a bird.

Now is the time to read books
But how to tackle such a task
How to carry your traditions
When every bird feels uneasy
And chroniclers of future times
Only mourn the fallen
It is the men and women who live
Who make history
The others will not count
The agony of unrequited love
And wasted life.
Does not concern
The lonely dogs of Fenyang.
They are only interested
In an invisible curtain of foretelling lyrics
And the vibrant stares
Of those who give life to darkness.
We need to conserve our dwindling
supply of  ideas.
When the black wings have passed beyond
Who will be left to read books?

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"

When alone, I thought
the crowd is wearing my face.
Silently judging,
safe in the knowledge of the tribe.
Transfixed by the multitude,
the lights flash on.

And as the daylight falls
the world is silent,
but for the sound of a singing bird
that comes from you.
The light that specifies the
face and the music,
swings as the deep abyss.

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.

I walked by the River Fen today
Landscapes mirrored underneath the sun.

Half-formed images like river ghosts,
Men swimming in silence beyond the scope

But today, the fish cried out to me, forcefully.
We need to find a place where dead fish can think.

A place to save a language broken
by the moons full silence.

Everything is ours and minds
forever wonder.

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?’

Once the black armies marched in Catalonia.

A time when nobody could think. Folkloric and religious celebrations smashed, a fumbling of tasteless glass.

Bayonets gleamed in the half lit shadows of the internment camps.

We challenged the greed of those who made this affair
To teach our children what was true.

A momentary adjustment to the order of things.
And those who take your dreams to shape them to their own.

Now the past is remembered in Barcelona, Girona, Lleida, and Tarragona.

Fire songs in every town remind us that autumn is near,
and distant shots of rainfall wake the ghosts of those that bled for this soil.

We sing and march to warn the watching world that is entranced by Europe’s spell.

To walk free in the medieval winding lanes of Besalu, and drink with friends in the bars of Peratallada.

0:2:45 in Xinxiang
19:45 in Kiev
Waking before the alarm sounds.
An old poet lifts his eye,
and quits his lagging dream.
Come on Liverpool.

The Red Army expects
England expects.
We, who are English now watch CCTV5.
While others sleep in their beds,
dividing rich fields from doors of dark
and grimy alleys.

Today I changed my sheets in Taiyuan
Nobody asks me how many times I do this?
Nobody asks me how I do it.
Nobody offers to help me change my sheets.

I knew a woman once who listened to Bob Dylan
And said she was ‘wounded in love’
She changed her sheets everyday
I never asked her why.

A messenger delivers
and everything I feel.
Big stories, with small bottom lines.

The quite boy with the simple smile.
He never knows what to say
to his mother, who is never satisfied.

The girl with the straight ‘A’s
who does not want to be a doctor,
and hides a dark family secret.

The old man hiding the pain
and fire inside,
consumed by ill-fate and
dragging himself from day-to-day.

A woman who told me
her husband had not kissed
her for eight years…….She
was beautiful.

A cautious loner
who once was a king.
Now he drinks each day,
and shouts at the moon.

Everybody’s searching for them,
everybody’s consumed by them
…and my story?

My eyes were blind,
and something started in my soul….

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.

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.

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.

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.

Dawn in Taiyuan, silent shadows spoke her name and unsubdued thoughts weaved a wild dance.

My heart swings, no human passions speak at this time.
I looked at the moon, voiceless in this darksome place.

The silent morning greets my soul and hides the secret sorrows of the night. And she so good and kind, her beauty hovers in the air.

Now I cannot see the morning moon and shadows tremble in cold despair.

As I reach out for the sudden echoes of our love that flicker in this grey morning light.

I wake to listen.

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.

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.

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.

It’s a day already.
And the morning sun
is wearing my face.
Half of a singing bird
Half the gentle sound
of a liuqin.
That comes from you.
The world is not silent
this morning.

Today I tried to remember some faces.
I saw Katia, mischievous elf from Espoo.
Who showed me my soul.

And Susan from Fenyang.
Who wanted to love me.
And smiled with the trees.
A spirit so beautiful and bright.

Faces and more remembered.
A love softly glowing.
Now slipping away at the edge.

They come with cries of lamentations
and cautious sunlight.
And words clinking with every step.

A strange land
For a summer farewell
Dark states of mind
By the Fen River

A time we ruled the world
When dancing was allowed
A river- like belt
Around our waists.

My winter clothing I give to you
I’m afraid you will be cold
But trees will flower again next year
Who will stay in this place?

Now I return home
My hair is grey
My accent assured
You smiled to ask

“Where are you from?”

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?

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.

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.

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 I am sick.
Thinking is hard to come,
words as cutting pain.
Soul physicians,
should I disclose the
whole complaint,
and curse the sky.
Or watch the churches
burn and babies cry.
Sickness is a lonely place,
of distant echoes,
and long past.
Now I need to lie down
and close my eyes.
Letters of dust, blowing
around my room.
The nearest thing to life.

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.