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Aztec Warrior Sep 2015
HUMAN HISTORY 2: LET'S DANCE
(A few words of acknowledgement: While these are my ideas and thoughts, I drew heavily on the story of 'Waterlily', written by Ella Cara Deloria. The discussion between the two Sioux women described below are drawn from this book. Her book beautifully details the life of 2 Dakota Sioux women and with them the customs, beliefs and beauty of the Dakota Sioux people. I am deeply in her debt.)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

'Let's dance.
Lets dance.
Put on your red shoes and dance the blues.'
-D. Bowie


I.
'Hao, Kola!'
'Hao, Kola!'
Greetings between two
darkly tanned men, black hair
long and waving erratically in the wind,
their deep black eyes smile
and embrace these two warrior friends.
'Hao, Kola!'

II.
Out in the open prairie,
under an intense blue sky,
a few sharply white clouds
float in contrast against it;
two Peoples drew towards
each other for a ceremonial sing,
as was customary before the Great Sun Dance.

Ill.
'Hokahe'. 'Hokahe'.
'Hokahe'. 'Hokahe'.
Dakotas and Omahas meet.'
Hokahe' floats on the fresh morning breeze.
Colorful war standards wave and
flirt about gracefully.
The Omahas have come to sing.
The Omahas, proud, magnificently bold.
The Omahas, self assured in painted red face,
wearing heavily fringed buckskin white,
brilliantly adorned.
With war standards and lances held high,
the Omahas were a breath taking sight.
As there on the prairie's lush green grass
Omahas greet Dakotas with ceremonial song.

IV.
Two Dakota women overheard talking:
Blue Bird: 'You met them?! What are
white people really like?
Are they gentle, kind, as their
skin would imply?'
Smiling One: 'No, they are very hard, very
stern and dull towards each
other. They pass each other without
recognition. Very unmannerly.'
Blue Bird: 'And what about the children?
How do they play?'
Smiling One: 'Oh, this is so sad I would
say. I don't understand the
reasoning behind their ways.
These people actually detest
their children. You should see
them; slapping their little one's
faces and lashing their poor little
buttocks to make them cry!
Yelling and screaming at them
anytime of the day. I have never
seen children treated this way!!'
Blue Bird: Deep in thought, hugs little
Water Lily. She feels sick with
sympathy for these unknown
children. Only crazy people
teach their children like this.
What makes white people act so crazy?

V.
The Sun Dance time has arrived.
All the different Peoples, Tribes.
The Dakota, Teton, Omaha
make good on their vows
to the Great Spirits,
renew the hopes of their families
for peace and plenty from the land.
And they danced.
Looking straight into the sun,
because they knew it was what made them one
with the world and each other.
And they danced.
Time itself was lost in the sun
and new life was begun.
And they danced.
Danced around and sacrificed on
the clean cut pole,
blessed and made holy
just for this ceremony.
And they danced.
Till the sun was thrice Earth eaten
and moon time rose full in the sky.
But now on a different scene
and a People from so long ago,
who in their naked skin,
danced and howled at the moon.
Howled at the dead and the living.
Howled and danced,
danced and howled cause they were human.

VI.
Alone,
orbiting on this blue-toned Earth
I want to ask:
When will we, today’s humans dance?
Dance in global community?
Dance on the lush green grassy plains?
Dance on high hillsides, howling at a full, lush moon?

VII
'Let's dance.
Let's dance.
Put on your red shoes and dance the blues...'

~~written 10.1.98~~
this poem was written a long time ago.. I think it still holds up.
I can never see my old friend again-
The river Han still streams to the east
I might question some old man of his place-
River and hills-empty is Tsaichou.
The beautiful actress Kitty Ting Hao [star of the 1961 Hong Kong movie "Beauty Parade"] was born on Monday 10/9/1939 in Macao and took her life on Tuesday 5/23/1967 in Los Angeles. So stands her fateful action based on deliberation 50 years later.

Kitty gave birth to her only child, a son, in 1963.

The 36 films of Kitty Ting Hao
Green Hills and Jade Valleys (1956)
Happy Union (1957)
Riots at the Studio (1957)
Mambo Girl (1957) ... Pao-ling
Little Darling (1958)
A Tale of Two Wives (1958)
All in the Family (1959) ... Feng Yaling
Zombie in a Haunted House (1959)
Riots in Outer Space (1959)
Between Tears and Laughter (1960) ... Xu Man-Li
Dreams Come True (1960) ... Fangfang and Ms Feng
Devotion (1960) ... **** Ling Ling / Lin Hsiao Ling
Corpses at Large (1960)
The Wild Girl (1960)
The Cliff (1961)
You Were Meant for Me (1961)
Beauty Parade (1961) ... Guo Sue
The Greatest Civil War on Earth (1961) ... Li Cuihua
The Male Bride (1962)
The Greatest Wedding on Earth (1962) ... Hwa/Li Man-Ling
A Fine Romance (1962) ... Princess Ila
Little Lotus (1963) ... Little Lotus Chin **-Hua
Devil's Love (1964)
The Murderer Is a Ghost (1964)
A Woman from the North and a Man from the South (1964)
Family Doctrine (Part 1) (1965) ... Yuen-Han
Agent Black Spider (1965)
You'd Better be Smart (1965)
A Modern Monkey King (1965)
Country Girl Goes to Town (1965)
A Modern Ji Gong (1965)
Family Doctrine (Part 2) (1965)
Black Peony (1966) ... Lee On-Lai/Leona/Annie
Four Sisters (1966) ... 2nd sister, Yuk-Chu
The Book, the Sword and the Spirit (1966)
Mr. Know How (1966)
The beautiful actress Kitty Ting Hao [star of the 1961 Hong Kong movie Beauty Parade] was born on Monday 10/9/1939 in Macao and took her life on Tuesday 5/23/1967 in Los Angeles. So stands her fateful action based on deliberation 50 years later.

Kitty gave birth to her only child, a son, in 1963.
Nigel Morgan Aug 2013
My name is Zhou Yuanten, but call me Eddie. I am a doctoral student at Xinjiang University –in the far, far west, but at Brunel to study this year. My English is good. I lived in Boston, Massachusetts for undergraduate years. I majored in piano at the New England C and then discovered I wanted to compose rather than play. So I go to MIT and soon I discover the English do it so differently, so I apply to Brunel. And at Brunel they then say of this place ‘you have to go.’ So here I am.

So surprising to be greeted in Chinese! And not just Nin Hao, we have a conversation! His accent is Northern Mandarin. He is writing a novel, he explains, about poets Zuo-Fen and Zuo-Si. We have 15 minutes conversation every day and I help him with his characters. Strange, to most of the class he is nobody, but to foreign students here we know him through his website and his software. I have even played his colours piece, The Goethe Triangle.

It is joy to be respected by a teacher and his sessions are like no other I’ve had here, and here I mean the UK. Oh, so laid-back, so lazy so many teachers. People lack energy here. They are dreamers and only think of themselves. He is full of energy and talks often about this Imogen of whom I never hear. Her father a great composer and she copied his music from when she was a girl – such beautiful calligraphy. Her father loved India and learned Sanskrit. He should have learned Mandarin; at least that is a living language. ‘Imo’, he says, ‘is my heroine, my mentor, the musician I most revere.’ He showed us her library and what was her studio in one of the old buildings here. He gives me this little book about her ten years in this place. A strange looking lady; there’s a photograph of her conducting Bach in the Great Hall. She looks like she is dancing.

This morning some are not here, but there are little notes on the desk with apologies perhaps. He leaves them untouched and we make chords again, and scales and arpeggios and Slonimsky’s famous melodic patterns. We write and write. He sings, we sing too. There is a horn and a cello with us today. They play and make jokes. They show us harmonics and tunings and bend our ears in new directions we do not expect. Those who complain about this course not being ‘advanced’ will eat their words; only I think some of those are not here.

As Chinese we hear sound in a different way I think. In our language tone is so important. To each word there are four tones that make meaning quite different. Chinese uses only about 400 syllables, compared to 4000 in English. So there are lots of syllables, like ****, that have multiple meanings. I tell him the story of the Lion-eating Poet, which he does not know!! I am writing this out for him, all 92 characters. Just one word **** but with four meanings – lion, ten, to make, to be. The Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den is the story of a poet (****) named **** who loves to eat lions (**** ****) goes to market (****) to buy ten (****) of them, takes them home to eat (****) and discovers they are made (****) of stone (****).

So I have no trouble hearing what others struggle to hear. We make pieces that are all about tone, and on a single note. Mark, the cellist, plays the opening of Lutoslawski’s Concerto – forty-two repetitions of a tenor ‘D’ a second apart. I had never heard this – a cadenza at the beginning of a concerto. Now we write a duo, on just one note. We write; they play. We are like many Mozarts trying to write only what we have already heard, making only one copy. I use the four tones and must teach the players the signs. I demonstrate and he says of the 1st tone – ‘Going to the Dentist, the 2nd – Climbing a ladder, the 3rd – ‘The Rollercoaster’, the 4th –‘Stepping on a pin’. We all do it!

And there are all these microtones. We listen to a moment of Ravel’s Bolero and pieces by Thomas Ades and Julian Anderson, then in detail (and with the score) to part of Duet for piano and orchestra by George Benjamin. This is spectral music. He is daring to introduce this – very difficult subject - this idea that a sound could be mimicked (? Is that the word – to impersonate?) by analysing it for the frequencies that make it up, and then getting instruments with similar acoustic properties to play the frequencies as pitches. So the need for microtones – goodbye equal temperament! Great in theory, difficult in practice.

This afternoon we are to study spectral composing using our computers. Until now we use our computers or smart phones to listen to extracts. He has this page of web links on his website for each session. Instead of listening through hi-fi we listen through our headphones. Better of course by far, no birds sounds or instruments playing next door. We can hear it again anytime. So there is software to download, Fourier analysis I suppose, he tries hard not to use any science or maths because there are some here who object, but they are fools. Even Bach knew of acoustics – designing the organs he played.

We finish this morning studying harmonic rhythm and this word tonality nobody seems quite able to describe. To him even the chromatic scale is tonality, and he shows in a duet for horn and cello how our ears take in tonality change. This is not about keys, but about groupings of pitches – anywhere – so a tonality can be spread across several octaves. So often, he says, composers are not aware of the tonalities they create, they don’t hear harmonic rhythm. They’re missing an opportunity! Sound can be coloured by awareness of what makes up a tonality. So understanding spectral music must help towards this. It is very liberating all this. If we take sound as a starting point rather than a system we can go anywhere.

Yesterday he asked me about a book he is reading. Did I know it? A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers by Xiaolu Guo. Of course I know this very funny book. He said he liked to think of music in the same way the character of the Chinese girl Z thinks about love.

“Love,” this English word: like other English words it has a tense. “Loved”, or “will love”, or “have loved.” All these specific tenses mean Love is time-limited thing. Not infinite. It only exists in particular period of time. In Chinese, Love is ài in pinyin. It has no tense. No past and future. Love in Chinese means a being, a situation, a circumstance. Love is existence, holding past and future.

And so it is with music. Music is a being, a situation, a circumstance. It holds past and future. It is wondrous, just like love.
Jun Lit Mar 2018
Naghihintay ang tasa
malinis, walang laman
sa tagpuang mesa
kahapo’y may kabatuhan
ng "¿Hola? at ¡Puñeta!"
at kanina’y may kapalitan
ng "Hello Sir! Wanna? Wanna?"
nasingitan pa saglit
ng malupit, galit sa langit
na si "Arigatou Nakamura"
At nakipag-rigodon
ang mga payaso’t pirata
at mga magnanakaw – mas ganid pa
sa apatnapu ni Alibaba

Nasaan ba si Ina?
Wala na po dito,
nandun na s’ya’t kahalikan
si "Xie xie, Duō shǎo? Ni hao ma?"

Pagkatapos kumulo
ng tubig sa kaldero ng lipunan
inilagay ko ang isang kutsarang
balawbaw ng galapong
nanggaling sa inipong
butil ng kagitingan
mula sa paanan
ng Malarayat na kabundukan
- kaagad-agad ay bumulwak,
nagngangalit na umawas

Kumakalat ang halimuyak
ng kapeng bagong luto
Naiinip na ang tasa
sa tagpuang mesa
ng bayang talisuyo
Kailan kaya may uupo,
yaong hindi bugaw na pinuno
na pagpuputahin ka
kung kani-kanino,
kundi bayaning lingkod
na hindi ka ipagkakanulo?

Kapatid, kahit isang lagok lang,
Malayo ang lakbayin, dapat nang simulan
Ang mahalaga’y kumikilos, humahakbang
Sulong tayo mga Kabayan . . .
To be translated - Brewed Coffee VI
I was travelling through the country
That was once East Turkestan,
Keeping my western mouth shut in
The province, Xinjiang,
I wasn’t going to linger there,
I had planned to head due east,
And follow the Western Wall to where
They spoke my Shanghainese.

They spoke a myriad dialects
All over Xinjiang,
There must have been forty languages,
And I didn’t know but one,
I had to get by with signing ‘til
I wandered in through the trees,
Into a tiny village where
A man spoke Shanghainese.

He stood in front of a tiny shop
That was selling drink and dates,
And something evil that looked like worms
All white, and served on a plate,
He said, ‘Ni Hao’, and ushered me in
And I took what I could get,
Shut my eyes and shovelled it in,
I can taste the foul stuff yet.

But there in the back of the tiny shop
Were a host of curios,
Most of them antique statuettes
The sort that the tourists chose,
But up on a shelf, I saw a lamp
Covered in grease and dust,
I said, ‘How much do you want for it?’
‘More than your soul, I trust!’

I said, ‘It looks like Aladdin’s Lamp,
But that was the Middle East!’
He shook his head and he said to me,
‘Aladdin was Chinese!
His palace used to be over there,’
And he pointed out to a mound,
A hill of rubble and pottery shards
That covered a hectare round.

He said he’d fossicked the ancient mound
And found all sorts of things,
Cups and plates and statuettes
And even golden rings,
But the thing he found that intrigued him most
Was the finding of that lamp,
He’d dug it out of a cellar there
That was cold, and dark, and damp.

And there by the lamp was an ancient scroll
With instructions in Chinese,
‘Don’t rub the lamp for a trivial thought
For the Djinn will not be pleased,
There are seven and seventy wishes here
Then the Djinn’s released from the spell,
But if you should wish the seventy-eighth
Then you’ll find yourself in hell!’

‘So how many wishes have now been wished,’
But the old man shook his head,
‘If I knew that, would I still be here,
I would rather this, than dead.’
He said that he’d been afraid to wish
For the lamp was ancient then,
Had passed through many since it was new,
Back in Aladdin’s den.

I offered to give him a thousand yuan,
But he shook his head, and sighed,
‘I’d rather keep it a curio,
It’s just a question of pride.’
I raised my bid, ten thousand yuan
And his face broke into a smile,
‘For that I would sell my mother’s hand,
And she’s been gone for a while.’

I paid the money and took the lamp
Then wandered into the street,
Held my breath and I thought of death,
And then of my aching feet,
Shanghai was a couple of months away
If I walked as the rivers flowed,
So I rubbed the lamp and I made a wish,
Woke up on the Nanjing Road.

It only had taken a minute or so
To travel a thousand miles,
I put the lamp in my haversack
And warmed to the Shanghai smiles,
I had a meal, and rented a room
And fell in bliss on the bed,
What I could do with another wish
Was the thought that entered my head.

I’m writing this by the flickering light
Of a candle, stuck in the lamp,
All I can smell is candlewax
And the air in here is damp,
I rubbed the lamp and I made a wish
But smoke poured out of the spout,
The Djinn took off with a howl of glee,
There’s no way of getting out!

David Lewis Paget
Timo Kat Dec 2014
Where I’m from,*
               unlike what Willie Perdomo says,
                        she might know
                                   where I was from.

Where I’m from,
                we love the breath of whispers.
                         My mom would sing and rhyme
                                   in the ears of my little sisters.

                She would hum and mumble,
                         my dad would whistle,
                                   they would never grumble
                                             until we fall asleep.

Where I’m from,
               we greet with
                          "guten morgen"
                                     to everyone in the breakfast’s table,
               and we smile and say,
                          "takk for maten"
                                     for those who serve the food.

Where I’m from,
            we play with colors for Holi,
                       we fast Ramadan,
                                  we celebrate Christmas.

Where I’m from,
                 we wish you Happy birthday
                               in more than 90 languages,
                                        and these are the advantages;
                              we make you a strawberry cake,
                         we even make you a card,
      but we might throw you in a lake,
or prank you very hard.

Where I’m from,
          we say,
                 “Ni hao ma?”
                           For the person living next door,
when we leave
          we say,
                “hasta luego mi amor.”

Where I’m from,
                we love the breath of whispers,
          she whispers,
                         “habibi, waheshtini.”
          I reply,
                         "I missed you more,"
          and add
                         “Ma armastan sind.”

Where I’m from,
           the smell of your kisses
                      plays with my senses
               so,
                      I could hear your hair,
                   I could taste your beauty,
                I could see your wintry smell
               and I could touch the echo of
                               I love you
              spelled out from your mouth.
Hildegarda Ares Feb 2010
You are so, so beautiful that you deserve to hear it over and over again...for everness.~hao
hao©All Rights Reserved
David Hutton Jul 2017
You see my face and race comes first.
I walk around and I feel cursed.
You greet me with "Ni hao!",
expect me to take a bow?
I filled the bathtub; go in headfirst.
Writing poems is always the best way to let off steam.
Maddy Sep 2018
Gull Serenade
By rainbowchaser  

They wake you in Hyannis with their Ha-Ha alarm
Crying sofly and their chorus begins
Barely heard them on Martha's Vineyard  
They left their voices in Nantucket  
Yeow,yeow,yeow
Somehow echoing a sweeter serenade this time
Much needed solace,balance spirit and unity
Ha oh Ha oh Hao
LONG call
Humming and laughing  on Main Street  
Hu oh Hu oh Hu  
Hush Hush  Hush
C@rainbowchaser2018
[star of the 1961 Hong Kong movie "Beauty Parade"] was born on Monday 10/9/1939 in Macao and took her life on Tuesday 5/23/1967 in Los Angeles. So stands her fateful action based on deliberation 50 years later.

Kitty gave birth to her only child, a son, in 1963.

The 36 films of Kitty Ting Hao
Green Hills and Jade Valleys (1956)
Happy Union (1957)
Riots at the Studio (1957)
Mambo Girl (1957) ... Pao-ling
Little Darling (1958)
A Tale of Two Wives (1958)
All in the Family (1959) ... Feng Yaling
Zombie in a Haunted House (1959)
Riots in Outer Space (1959)
Between Tears and Laughter (1960) ... Xu Man-Li
Dreams Come True (1960) ... Fangfang and Ms Feng
Devotion (1960) ... **** Ling Ling / Lin Hsiao Ling
Corpses at Large (1960)
The Wild Girl (1960)
The Cliff (1961)
You Were Meant for Me (1961)
Beauty Parade (1961) ... Guo Sue
The Greatest Civil War on Earth (1961) ... Li Cuihua
The Male Bride (1962)
The Greatest Wedding on Earth (1962) ... Hwa/Li Man-Ling
A Fine Romance (1962) ... Princess Ila
Little Lotus (1963) ... Little Lotus Chin **-Hua
Devil's Love (1964)
The Murderer Is a Ghost (1964)
A Woman from the North and a Man from the South (1964)
Family Doctrine (Part 1) (1965) ... Yuen-Han
Agent Black Spider (1965)
You'd Better be Smart (1965)
A Modern Monkey King (1965)
Country Girl Goes to Town (1965)
A Modern Ji Gong (1965)
Family Doctrine (Part 2) (1965)
Black Peony (1966) ... Lee On-Lai/Leona/Annie
Four Sisters (1966) ... 2nd sister, Yuk-Chu
The Book, the Sword and the Spirit (1966)
Mr. Know How (1966)
His wife was due on the midnight plane
That was coming from Beijing,
He got to the airport early so
He wouldn’t miss the thing,
There wasn’t a seat at Wenzhou so
He found that he had to stand,
It’s always tough when you’re sleeping rough
Away, in a foreign land.

He settled down in a corner, set
His back up next to the wall,
Pulled out the pic of his own Mei Ling
In front of a waterfall,
Her eyes smiled into the camera when
He’d taken the snap that day,
But that was before they married,
Now it seemed an age away.

They’d both had to fight her parents when
They saw he was from the west,
They called him a foreign devil, a
Yang wei, and all the rest,
They wanted her wed to a Han, they said,
Mei Ling had answered ‘No!’
She’d made her mind up herself, she said,
And would be his own lӑo pό.

She said she was flying China Air
And that gave him cause for thought,
He knew that their safety record was
The worst in any port,
But he waited patiently by the clock
Til it gave the midnight chime,
Then wandered into reception where
She’d be, most any time.

The Chinese waiting beside him
Milled and jabbered as they stood,
He never could understand a word
But he smiled as if he could,
And then he found they were friendly
Though they nudged each other now,
And some had even approached him with
Their greeting, their Ni Hao.

By half past twelve, there wasn’t a plane
And the people looked upset,
He thought there’d be an announcement,
Someone said, ‘there’s nothing yet.’
At one o’clock there were tears and fears
That the plane would never show,
And then he heard that the plane had ditched
In the waters off Ningbo.

His heart had sunk and he almost cried
But he thought to grieve with grace,
And everyone else was struggling
They were scared of ‘losing face’,
But they all broke down when a man came round
And he said, ‘there’s little hope,’
There wasn’t a single survivor,
Then he cried, he couldn’t cope.

He’d lost the love of his life, Mei Ling
With her beaming almond eyes,
Her jet black hair and her loving stare
But he got a quick surprise,
A man led him to a phone where they
Had called for him in vain,
And from Beijing he heard Mei Ling
Who sobbed, ‘I missed the plane!’

David Lewis Paget
Qualyxian Quest Jul 2019
that which does not **** me
only makes me stronger

so wrote Friedrich Nietzsche
but he ain’t around no longer

the military school of life
isn’t a whole lot of fun

you **** and then get killed
soon dead and then you’re done


                  Who actually won?
Anais Vionet Sep 2022
We sat beneath a night sky of graduated charcoals, blacks and interstellar blues. Fall’s begun its indispensable work, banishing the harsh sun, the creepy lanternflies and hot summer nights.

The stars seemed hesitant tonight, like they feared the sun might change its mind, reverse its course and run them back off - except one, which Peter says is Jupiter (and therefore not a star at all).

We were (Peter, Sunny, Anna and I), studying, in our fold-up lounge chairs and reading by little kindle lights clipped on our books. Leong’s there too - supposedly studying - but in reality, she was waiting for her date.

Leong and Sile have been flirting since last year and tonight’s their first, official date. Leong’s never been on a western date before or ever been alone with a boy in a car. She’s only seen romance in movies or from afar, like an astronomer viewing a distant moon through a telescope.

Her outfit, though casual, was coalesced from six wardrobes and no king or questing knight has ever been dressed more carefully or with greater ceremony. She even positioned her chair at a carefully chosen angle, to show her, initially, in her best light - “Zhù ni hao yùn!” She insisted (It’s good luck).

She’s a gorgeous, brilliant, amazing woman with a razor-thin veneer of amorous confidence. I know my nerves playup when I’m uncertain about things, but Leong’s playing it off, acting casual.. ish.

Finally, with an almost physical jolt, she saw him enter the quad. As he approached, his every aspect was scrutinized by vigilant, overprotective roommates. The air was filled with the whispered buzz of shared analysis.

Soon they were walking off together and chuckling at something we couldn’t hear. It’s funny, I’ve never felt so much like a parent.
BLT Marriam Webster word of the day challenge: Coalesce: to come together or join forces
Isa Falkland Jun 2016
Hello, bonjour, hola, ni hao
Discovering your site now
Has opened a new door
And more
So please don't lock it
I promise: I'll rock it
Paul Hansford Aug 2018
I could say
   “Ni hao”
for “Good morning,”
and it was only polite to say
    “Xie xie”
for “Thank you.”

That was my limit
until, in a babble of unfamiliar sounds,
I heard the word, “**-murr,”
and then again, “**-murr.”
**-murr? I thought.
Do they have The Simpsons in China?
But it was only “back door.”

Later, struggling to board a bus by the middle door,
I heard the conductor say,
    “**-murr”
– and I could even hear the exclamation mark –
   “**-murr!”,
I knew this time he wasn’t talking about The Simpsons,
and I had a pretty good idea
he wasn’t a fan of classical Greek poetry either.

But I didn’t want to be left on the pavement
when he closed all the doors and drove off.
So I just squeezed in by the middle door,
as if it was all Chinese to me.
I just re-discovered this on a memory stick I had completely forgotten.  It dates from a trip we made to China several years ago - no, make that "many years ago."  Unfortunately, My computer doesn't recognise the Chinese characters, so I have to rely on the phonetic version.
Max Vale Sep 2017
Hello,
Jambo,
Konichiwa,
Hola,
Marhaba,
Aloha,
Bounjour,
Ni Hao,
Ciao.
Qualyxian Quest Aug 2020
Chidhood  in Taiwan
The rains from Mother Asia

Later then Taipei
Not Russia's Anastasia

Taipei 101
We eat our Haagen Dasz

What will we see
When they look at us?
K.F.C.'s M.S.G. excito-toxins made Harland Sanders a river dancer
before he crapped out from acute leukaemia & chicken-liver cancer*

The beautiful actress Kitty Ting Hao, star of the 1960 Hong Kong movie *Beauty Parade,
was born on Monday 10/9/1939 in Macao and took her life on Tuesday 5/23/1967 in Los Angeles. So stands her fateful action based on deliberation 50 years later.   ♚♚♚♚♚ See Miss Kitty Ting Hao on You-Tube, search for "Snake Feast."
Jordan Soriano Sep 2019
can you hear them?
the cries of the children who have no land to pass down to their descendants

can you see them?
the bodies of the Sainas (elders) who starved to death

can you feel them?
the spirits of our ancestors chasing you out of our jungles

do you appreciate them?
the CHamoru soldiers who fought beside you in combat

i'isao hao: you are a sinner
you have sinned against us, against God, against our ancestors, against the land, and you have sinned against the future generations

get out of our land! take your bullets! take your bulldozers! take the chemicals that pollute our water! take your bombs! take back your broken promises! take back your lies! take it all back!

give us, the taotaotano (people of the land) our islands back
Na libre i Islan Marianas: free the Marianas Islands

— The End —