Prometheus ignites to spark this
Molotov to make his Marxist
On swine Fuhrer's Faux News tweet
Hashtag it #GorbachevWallStreet
'Cuz Putin's puppet Pinochet's
Whipped Creme de Kremlin's CIA  
From JFK to Allende
Like Russian roulette ricochet
I'll Trotsky through McCarthy's brains
Leave slain these ****** sugar Keynes   
Discred' the Fed’s six-figureheads
With strikes at dawn more red than Debs  
Still breakin' breads with Mulan Bouges
Makin' men of Khmer Stooges
Seein’ Rouge when Al Spans Greens
Potemkin loan wolf ponzi schemes
Who count the sheep like Philippines
Then Black Pearl Harbor GRANMA’s dreams...

Of Marilyn Monroes in store
Just off-shore ****** who **** the poor
A Glass of Steagall's broken trust
Half emptier than bowls of dust
In rust beltways still spewin’ fumes
As factories become Khartoums
No carbon footprint tax the hint
Of Amazon decays in Flint
Just pop the caps and drown in debt
Like Kent State drinkin' to forget
That cuttin’ class engenders race
Leaves glory, gold and God's disgrace
To slaughter Moor than Reconquista  
From Marti to Sandinista     
With Zapata sharin’ crops  
Till my Mexica heartbeat stops

I'm Pancho infiltratin’ villas
The Magilla of guerillas
In the midst of Congolese  
Same colonies, just different thieves
To me, my breed’s of landless deeds
So how you like ‘dem Appleseeds?
FReeducatin’ caves of youth
Fed Citizen’s United Fruit
‘Cuz now my open eye of Horus
Battle cries Grito de Lares
Che is centered in these veins
So my Ashoka takes the reigns
These Iron paci-Fists pack hits
Like Jimi on some Malcolm ****
Still Hajj mirages I barrage
The Raj with sheer Cong camouflage

Deployin' Sepoys on viceroys
And pol desPots’ in the employs
Of Tweedledums who run the slums
With country clubs of loaded guns
These Betsy Deez bear arms to school
Till no kids fly kites in Kabul
So gas-mask your Sharia flaw
I'll Genghis Khan Sheikoun it raw  
'Cuz refugees are rising
And we're anti-socializing
Subsidizing private party plans
Who take commands from ***** hands
These grand old klans coup klux control
Your diamond minds with mines of coal
An oil Standardized existence
Solar powers my resistance

******* sun of Liberty  
My fear itself is history  
Rewriting wrongs of Leo’s creed
In culture’s blood and vulture’s greed
An alt-right/all-white cockpile   
Stockpilin' human capital
In tricklin’ contests over spoils
Of the cotton-ceded soils
Jingos chained to Cruci-fictions
Swallowin' good Christian dictions
I spit Spanish Inquisition
Trippin' Socrates sedition
Droppin' Oppen's fission quest
For "now I am become death"
'Cuz G-bay pigs in-Fidel's sites
Flew U-2's into my last rights

These Saddamites, I smite Assad
Then spread 'em like Islamabad
Convert for-profit prison tsars
From Escobars to Bolivars 
Like currency in Venezuela
Current police-state favela
Where 9/10th's of your possession's
Worth less than your Great Depression’s
Upscale bail ‘em outs of jail
With Dodd-Frank banks too big to fail
Your FDA-approved psychosis
From Campos’ daily dose of
More defense? Here’s my two cents
These slave wages ain’t excrements
So just say no to Reaganomics    
Got us hooked, but not on phonics

Just that Noriega strain
Of Contras stackin' crack contain
Like MAD dogs who trade weapons-grades  
For Ayatollah hate tirades
On “don’t ask, don’t tell” plague ebonics
Drug crusAID Jim Crow narcotics     
Warsaw rats injected, tested,
Quarantined, and then arrested
Guess the J. Arbenz' lens
Still Tet offends their ethnic cleanse
Still Wounding Knees of Standing Sioux
Till Crazy Horses stampede you   
For Mother Nature’s common ground
My Martin Luther’s gather ‘round
Is hellbound sounds of Nero’s crown  
Let's burn this Third World Reichstag down

Vox populyin’ to remove ‘ya
Like Lumumba then Nkrumah
So some Pumbaa kleptocrat
Declares himself the next Sadat
To hide supply-side Apartheid
Increase demand for genocide
So check your factions in Uganda  
Tune into Hotel Rwanda
Come play pirates with Somalis
Then desert ‘em like Benghazis
Thirst for blood so French Algiers  
It boils mine in Trails of Tears  
My destiny unManifest-
Oppressive Adam-Smitten West
So pay your overdues to Mao
I’ll Mussolini Chairman Dow

Then flood this 9th ward Watergate
With killing fields of glyphosate
I'll redistribute IMF’s
With Left so deft you’d think it’s theft
I’ll My Lai massacre these lines
With sweet Satsuma samurhymes
I'll make these Madoff Hitlers squeal
With that Bastille New Deal cold steel
Now feel that Shining Pathos wrath
Drop Nagasaki aftermath
On Nanjing kings and dragon’s Diems
With ****** bodhisattva zens
To show you how I pledge allegiance
With razed flags still rapt in Jesus  
Laosy liars pogrom psalms
Can’t Uncle Phnom my Penh’s truth bombs

On heroes shootin' ******
My fix is un-American
Tiananmen democracies
To Syngman Rhee hypocrisies  
Theocracies drive me Hussein
With Bush league’s mass destruction claim
So I dig laissez pharaohs graves
With pyramids of Abu Ghraibs
Then nail their coffers closed like Vlad
I AM THE GHOST OF STALINGRAD
My hammer forged in winters past
My sickle reaps the shadows caste
By pantheons of penta-cons
Whose Exxons lead to autobahns
When liberal Arts of War and Peace in
Free speech teach my voice of treason

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

I wanna  be your cold stone girl,
The one you not only flirt but order a banana flavor for.

The thought of  you going to other cold stone
without me there frowning upon your choice
could **** me even in the city I love the most.

While we're both chasing our own dreams
I'll always remember you said
"Who knows what will happen,it's a small world"

I wanna be your cold stone girl,
The one that always greets you with a smile.
If you cannot find any cold stone you like
in  Nanjing, don't worry
I'm always up for ice cream in the cold

In February, you are off to my city
I secretly wish you won't for fall any cold stone girls
that giggle at your corny  jokes

I wanna be your cold stone girl,
and keep you company
While we both sail around the world.

10 months sounds like a long period of time,but
it's a small world after all.
When we fulfill that unknown dreams of our own
Meet me again in the cold stone,
for I will always be, your cold stone girl.

i have felt hanzi in my blood
fireworks in my skin
dragons in my bones

i have looked at a cloudy sky
and thought of guangzhou
of shenzen
of nanjing

walls and death and power are my legacy
i was born the descendant of a tyrant
but i have changed it
twisted it
and now i am the ancestor of a diamond age

once upon a time we bound our feet in rags
and hobbled on dirt-packed roads
but not anymore
not anymore
now we sprint full-out to the east
the rising sun calls us like silken whispers
and we laugh at those who would hold us back

walls and death and power are the legacy
of those who reach for it
of those who write defiance on their chests
in ****** pinyin
and above all
of those who take the fireworks from their skin
and scream them alive

The Führer smashes his fist down, sending millions into the void.
An S.S. man in the Lager directs his gaze into the void.

British boys lie entrenched, gambling: mortar rains on German lines.
They charge at dawn with bets and hopes, but each pays into the void.

Sailors smell petrol and hurl themselves to the murky waters.
Fire explodes battleships, and grey Zeros rise into the void.

The Angel of Marzabotto buries the dead, wiping his brow.
An officer lodges a bullet there; the Angel prays to the void.

Green GIs go romping through the jungle after Victor Charlie.
They come upon rice fields, and set My Lai ablaze, into the void.

George III holds tight to colonies that raise muskets and new flags.
The Ministry of All Talents leads him, crazed, into the void.

Nippon men flood Nanjing and throw a maiden to the ground.
They ****** their bayonets to send her, dazed, into the void.

Fascist youth march the Bedouins across the Libyan sands.
Captors fence nomads in; the Duce looks, unfazed, into the void.

A young captain and his Bedouins shoot Turks without pretense.
Lawrence, disillusioned, fades out unpraised, into the void.

I was staying in the village
That was known as Banzhushan,
In the mountains, in the Province
That the Chinese call Hunan,
It was perched atop the mountain
You could reach, and touch the sky,
But there were no single women,
And the men up there were shy.

They were poor, could offer nothing
To entice a willing bride,
They earned little from their labours,
And their houses, poor inside,
So the girls would leave to travel
Down the mountain to the plain,
Where they’d find a richer husband
Than the farmer, sowing grain.

So the men would send out raiders
To the outskirts of the towns,
And they’d kidnap straying peasants,
All the women that they found,
And they’d target younger widows
Who would not put up a fight,
Then would carry them to Banzhushan
Protected by the night.

I had met a village elder
By the name of Zhang Fan Cheng,
He was ancient, a magician,
One the Chinese call yāorén,
He invited me to dinner,
It was simple, shoots and rice,
He was dignified and courteous,
But caught me by surprise.

In the further room, a mirror
Stood at length, both straight and tall,
The frame was wrought in silver
And it leant against the wall,
He showed it to me proudly
Then asked how much would I pay?
For just 5,000 R.M.B.
He’d sell it me, today!

I reached out to feel the silver,
Was it fake or was it real?
He sensed my hesitation
Then he motioned, ‘You be still!’
And plunged his hand into the glass
The mirror let him in,
His arm up to the elbow
Against science, against sin!

He reached his arm behind and pulled,
A girl came into sight,
She was standing in the mirror,
He was holding her so tight,
And she stared, while looking at me
And she said: ‘Qing bang bang wo!’
I could read it on her lips, and then
The wizard let her go.

She had said: ‘Would you please help me!’
But I’d stepped back in the room,
She was nowhere near behind me
Just reflected, in the gloom,
And I saw a tear forming at
The corner of her eye,
The wizard pulled his arm out, and
She waved to me, ‘Goodbye!’

I paid the man his money, and
I took the mirror down
On a wooden cart he lent me,
And I took it through Hunan,
Then I packed it on a train and went
Off speeding to Nanjing,
Where I kept a small apartment,
And I turned, and locked us in.

I stood the mirror over by
A meagre wooden shelf,
Then I stood quite still before it
Hoping she would show herself,
And I tried to put my arm inside
Like he had done before,
But the mirror was unyielding,
So I stood there, and I swore!

That night the girl appeared,
Standing right behind the glass,
And she pummelled on the surface
As if she’d be free at last,
But the mirror was ungiving,
And I couldn’t hear her voice,
So I took a ball pein hammer -
It had given me no choice!

She could see me through the mirror,
In alarm, she mouthed ‘Meiyou!’
But her beauty had beguiled me
Though I knew she’d shouted ‘No!’
I was fevered and impatient now
To set this beauty free,
So I swung the ball pein hammer
And it shattered, over me!

She fell out through the broken glass,
Lay trembling in my room,
Bleeding, sobbing in the silence,
Like the silence of the tomb,
And she said she’d been imprisoned
Since the days of Qin **** Huang,
Then she writhed upon the carpet
As her flesh turned into sand.

I had wanted to release her
To relieve those tender tears,
But her body, once released took on
The last two thousand years;
She took one last, despairing look
Then withered up to die,
And for years I’ve sought the answer
To the only question - ‘Why?’

David Lewis Paget

(Glossary -
R.M.B. - Ren-Min-bi - or yuan (Chinese currency.)
Yāorén - magician
Qing bang bang wo - (Ching bang bang wor) - Please help me!
Meiyou - (May yo) - No, nothing
Qin **** Huang - (Chin Sher Hwang)
1st Emperor of China - 246-210 BC)

I am from
        waking up at 5 a.m.
        and making my dad pour me a glass
        of chocolate milk and put in
        the Tom & Jerry VCR tape.
I am from
        the years spent on stage
        performing, acting, dancing,
        making music from the keys and strings of instruments
        that I have since abandoned.
I am from
        the technology that shaped me,
        which I cannot live without-
        the shows and movies and games; staying up,
        the bright screen of my laptop glaring against the darkness of my room.
I am from
        crying until my eyes are red and raw,
        happy and sad and laughing tears
        from the deaths and lives and breakups and reunions
        of the characters and shows I will never forget.
I am from
        lying in my bed
        listening to the music that has healed me,
        blaring in my ears
        and against the four walls that enclose me.
I am from
        the places I’ve been-
        from La Jolla to Lancaster to Boston and Nanjing,
        to the places I wish to go-
        from Sydney to Quebec to Venice and Chicago.
I am from
        homework and studying and tests,
        and homework and studying and tests.
        Yearning for college since middle school,
         to be around people who crave knowledge, too.
I am from
        Modus Ponens and Modus Tollens and Disjunctive Syllogism,
        and memorizing fallacies and philosophy arguments at 8 a.m.,
        the course that challenged me beyond my limits,
        the course that introduced me to my favorite place in the world.
I am from
        my home away from home-
        lying on the grass of the quad,
        dancing beneath the stars
        to the Canon, the soundtrack of my youth.
I am from
        the memories I hold
        within polaroids and photos behind screens,
        within songs and books and between the lines
        of the poems that I have bled from my heart onto paper.
I am from
        my previous and continuing attempts to escape this town,
        and the meaningless interactions within the cold halls of highschool;
        trying to find the people who will become my people
        and the places I will call home.


                                                         ­                                j.z.

she's no deva of mine
no caterpillar concubine
no cocoon consort
no butterfly  courtesan
she's four tigresses in one
suckling, wandering, denned and leashed
And I'm following the track of them all
She's my white tigress of Nanjing
and though I haven't ever practiced kungfu nor qigong
I have applied to be her jade dragon
Or at least one of her green dragons
In order to help her to reach one of her nine illuminations.
So I fused my qi and ching and  shen
and turned myself into a Knight of the Order of the Porcupine
and offered to gently tatoo with my quills
Her *******
with a motto of invisible yet immortal ink saying :
"Qui s'y frotte s'y pique"
Written phonetically [kisifrotsipik].
I thought because I sat just like a buddha
I was at that moment a buddha
I thought that if I breathed like a green or jade dragon
She'd let me have a bite at her immortality.
No way, my tigress said :
You just can't be and have been

Explain Krieg und Krise.  Remember Nanjing.  Hand twist nasturtium, trim Elijah in no other language but your own.  Delicious, decked against scurvy despite punishing days world unwraps, made available to voracity, where would you build, on what day?  Perfection unable to sit still comes towards ambush as peasant night squeaks to the border.  Chanticleer in linear e phlox stammers discretely, hammers combination, blends tonality.  Gravid as brook trout, orangerie cascades kanji.  Bucolic spasm shimmering, weeping runes a la Giverny become Cycladic, veers off color’s lambent arsenal.  Caustic repeats, Gatling interferes, hope bails, song recants.  A Zebedee in Flemish hue cracks *** luck, lets out gurgle.  But in good fortune, peaches to daisies, Abigail to titmouse, family is raised.

Do not remember past things that bring regret
Memories, caught between the unborn and dead
Perish and fade— all men are destined to forget

Byzantium sacked, Malacca discovered yet
The golden coffin buried deep at world’s end
Do not remember past things that bring regret

Around and around the monument of intellect
Raised the holy fire, like stars ascend
Burning (all men are destined to forget)

Paramount of new earth the oceans beset
Storms crush men racing to the ****** land
Forget, forget those things that bring regret

Aleppo, Nanjing, Warsaw. Nothing left to recollect
Of all things between the unborn and dead
Do not remember past things that bring regret

At day’s closing, the roads direct
Travelers to the mirage at horizon’s end
Do not remember past things that bring regret
Memories fade— all men are destined to forget.