"yangtze" poems
PROMETHEUS!
Prometheus. You,
Were favored among man.
PROMETHEUS!
Prometheus. You
Stole fire from the gods.
I was fire and
lightening
at the creation of Earth.
Feet dance like,
Shiva.
Hips sway,
Calypso
Hair flung wild like
Yangtze and Ganges
I was energy and passion
until you loved me
to Olympus rock.
Greedy bird, you are never full.
Sep 11, 2013
Sep 11, 2013 at 6:24 PM UTC
I'm not sure if death is an injury
but from the Rockies to the Yangtze
If you read any Bukowski
You may never rip that knife free
Nov 21, 2016
Nov 21, 2016 at 7:36 AM UTC
his ancestor a coolie
laid the rails many long years
but returned to Peking
to fight white devils
this, the tale
passed through the generations
with the jade necklace which
never left his mother's neck
first born son
spawn of two doctors, expectations
were high he would practice
honorable healing arts
early in his years
he fueled their fears, and ire
coming through their sterile door
with bloodied knuckles
black eyes, fat lips
they tried various exorcisms:
confinement in the temple, lashings
and hushed cabals with head healers,
but none could shrink his will
much to their dismay
Stanford rejected him; he landed
at a community college, where he spent
an indolent year, before vanishing
a thousand tears and fears later
the PI revealed what a hundred
billable hours had reaped
the son was so far west
he was east, in a village on the Yangtze
stooped over paddies, his feet firm
in the mire the generations
had yearned to escape
Dec 3, 2015
Dec 3, 2015 at 3:06 PM UTC
We shall not ask for the precious pearl of the Duke of Sui,
nor for the priceless jade disk of Master **
We merely ask for the recent news of our homeland.
The Palace of Spiritual Illumination must be still there,
surrounded by desolation.
What's happened to the stone statues buried deep in the grass,
still guarding the Imperial tombs?
Is it true that our people left behind in the occupied territories
are still planting mulberry trees and hemp?
Is it true that the rear guard of the Barbarians
only patrols the city walls?
This widow's father and grandfather were born in Shantung.
Although they never held high office, their fame spread far and wide.
I remember when they carried on animated discussions
with other scholars by the city gate.
The listeners were so crowded that their sweat fell like rain.
Their offspring crossed the Yangtze River to the South many years ago.
Drifting in the rapids, they mingled with refugees.
I send blood-stained tears to the mountains and rivers of home,
And sprinkle a cup of earth on East Mountain.
I imagine when Your Lordship, His Majesty's envoy, upholding the Imperial spirit,
passes through our two capitals, K'ai Feng and Lo Yang,
Thousands of people would line the streets and present tea and broth
to welcome you....
Announce that the Emperor's heart aches for the suffering people---
they are his own children.
Let them understand that the Will of Heaven remembers all living beings.
Our sagacious Emperor offers his trust which is as brilliant as the sun.
There is no need to negotiate many times after the long chaos of the years.
1.8k
Pudong Airport to Shanghai. Yes. Good. Push in.
Start go....go...go! 150kms, 200kms, 300kms, FOUR ONE FIVE KMS.
High above the highways I think
Today the driver is drunk.
Today is the day that I die.
Quickly I take a cellphone pic
And send my last moment to my mother.
I am shaking, this is so fast
What flashes in front becomes the past.
Shanghai, we're here.
I push myself out of the carriage
Through the crowds on the elevators
I run to the Yangtze River
I breathe in the over-polluted air.
Thank you.
Now I am safe.
I put on my mask
And walked to my heated apartment.
May 12, 2015
May 12, 2015 at 10:51 AM UTC
Masculinum Hyppeastrum,
monstrum;
the man eating
botanica,
the endlessly flowering plant,
had enough of me.
Went to sleep,
or worse,
he perished.
I must have said something nasty
about his size;
doesn't flower anymore,
all dried out,
doesn't do a thing,
his onion is weeping.
Christmas roses,
as I call the girls,
lost the will
to live.
All my,
previously green, flora
is pointing her leafless finger
at me.
I've done nothing,
that's the problem.
I forgot all about my green plants;
the environment is wrong,
there is too much acidity,
and that's my fault.
I will search
under the garden snow
for snow drops,
I left to themselves
two years
February,
my snow tears.
For colour,
I have lemons and limes,
green and yellow;
sitting on a traditionally,
blue, hand-painted
Chinese china platter.
River Yangtze
is still running through my mind.
Chai,
Lemon tea and lemonade.
~
Author Notes
*Flowering plants from Bahia : Hyppeastrum sp.
From the 1970s, many plant novelties from Bahia
came to light with the expeditions carried out
by Howard Irwin and collaborators
of NYBG (USA) and by Raymond Harley
from RBG-Kew (UK). This provoked a renewal
of interest, among botanists, in the flora of Bahia*
(3-1-07)
Oct 14, 2010
Oct 14, 2010 at 3:43 PM UTC
we are not safe
all the markets could come crashing down
it could happen any day now
a blue origin rocket ship
never making it to its final destination
no man knows the hour or the day
no man knoweth that
bridget jones had her cigarettes
with wine and mr darcy
but i only have **** and a plastic
one liter bottle of coke zero
and no mr darcy to know the hour or the day
helen fielding, enabler of the delusional,
recycled happy endings
but the plastic coke bottle
isn't a jane austen novel
and the chinese don't want our garbage anymore
there is enough garbage in china already
"there are 8.3 billion tons of plastic in the world"
8.8 million metric tons are chinese trash
for the yangtze river to carry to the sea
sometimes i feel just like garbage previously shipped to china
trash and blue origin debris
comeuppance for the yangtze river to carry to the sea
endless oceans end
same place plastic rocketship garbage begins
Jul 13, 2018
Jul 13, 2018 at 5:47 AM UTC
river run like a song.
watch the joy
leak from the wells
in your eyes,
and let it spill over like
ink and write
the pages of your story
in the history books
of heaven: oh,
you will be remembered.
you will be remembered.
an amalgamation
of all the blood that
runs through you:
the pasig,
the yangtze,
the pacific,
the sewers of manila,
john the baptist's,
tracing down your cheeks
and down your throat and
slowly you begin to choke:
the saltwater sticks to your
throat. you do nothing
but breathe,
breathe slowly and
try not to choke
but slowly swallow
the birthrights
that remain river
run,
river run
and remember
where you came from.
Dec 22, 2014
Dec 22, 2014 at 8:50 AM UTC
Take me home sweet senorita
Ride me on your wings
Flap your arms
Cause hurricanes
And watch them like Van Gogh would
With stars in our ears
Then send me down little ******
Along the Yangtze River banks
To flood my paddies and scythe my stalks
And feed the family waiting
Take me home weeping widow
Let me ride in the hole in your heart
Where the walls are decorated in photographs you were never in
Drop me in the heart of industry
Let me build to make my way
To build the home to which I walk
To build the table on which I will feed my family the spoils of a day in field
Take me home
Mother
Slide me between your arms
Show me where to go
Bring to me my family
Fed upon my table
In my house
With the harvest of my hands
Be the mother of my family
Make where you are, my home
Jan 24, 2011
Jan 24, 2011 at 10:42 AM UTC
I don't know the terrain of my soul.
Am I a desert or a mountain?
Do rivers run through me?
I want to see the deserts I could be.
Climb the mountains and see if I'm there,
Sitting on the peak.
I want to swim the rivers
And see if I'm underneath those rapids.
How else could I know my geography?
How will I know what I'm made of?
Yes, I may be made of hills and cedar trees
But I might want to be an aurora borealis.
I might want to be more than dry dirt
Or at least be able to try to be.
There is too much, too many possibilities.
Highlands, valleys, oceans, skies.
Open, open skies...
I want to see it, I want to see it all.
I will be satisfied with no less.
I want to know: What do I see
When I am reflected in the Thames?
Or the Yangtze River or the Mediterranean?
Would the Nile show me my insides,
As an X-Ray machine from the gods?
That girl in the Arctic ice-
Can she get out?
Sep 9, 2010
Sep 9, 2010 at 11:35 AM UTC
I traveled almost everywhere, growing up. It took years. The landscapes, flora and fauna, the art, music, cuisines and curse words all seem to blend together in my mind.
Mount Fuji, the Rhine, the Himalayas, the Chattahoochee, Shenzhen, Washington DC, the Alps, and Appalachians, Moscow, Beijing, Dublin, Portland, Paris, Atlanta, London, St. Petersburg, Tokyo, Rome, Wuhan, Berlin, the Yangtze, the Mississippi, Saint-Tropez and LA - are all jumbled up in my brain, like old, wrinkled maps in a glove compartment.
My mom has total recall - she can remember every day of her life since her mama handed her a faded yellow and blue rattle when she was 6 months old - God gave me the glove compartment.
Still, some things are unforgettable, like an electrical storm breaking around Mt Everest, the lights of New York City, at night, from a helicopter, glittering on the horizon like a queen’s crown. The Danube, from a riverboat under a too-bright moon and the elegant poverty of Italy.
In some ways, I grew up like an exile because we moved every couple of years and I’d have to start my social life all over again - usually in a different language. Every place we left seemed a lost paradise, and each new place seemed cold and harsh.
Speaking of home to harsh transitions, November recess is over and we’re back in New Haven - with two weeks before final exams. Welcome to exhaustion week (weeks).
This morning I started going through my syllabuses, and after a week of holidaying - they seemed like indecipherable relics from a different world, a world of papers, tests and stingy-fun. I’ve so many things to wrap-up, my brain can’t seem to contain them all, I’m a gadget that’s out of memory.
I used to take my books on vacation, to remain in the ‘game’ mentally and stay ahead of the grind. Not this time. Hey, growing up, I’ve had my moments of ‘developmentally appropriate’ rebellion - in this case - I wanted memories to hoard, like inoculations against the coming work and loneliness cycles.
Nov 25, 2023
Nov 25, 2023 at 9:07 PM UTC
I could read you some smoking hot papers
and you
could get high on the vapours,
or possibly go A to Zee in the
pages of our dictionary,
she says,
I'll give it some thought.
Then I get an F for the fantasy
I thank her and
she
goes and blanks me,
this is not an
'incident on the Yangtze'
this happened in my own
backyard.
I play solo with this tight illusion
it saves on the electric or
is that a delusion?
as always
I'm full of confusion
I blame that on Welles and
his Mercury radio show.
May 4, 2017
May 4, 2017 at 1:55 PM UTC
Once, back when
you
were just a whisper
on my
bated breath
I spilled my heart
across
this marble floor
And you,
in all your
splendor
Watched
as rivulets of me
my blood
my passion
my reasons
Ran as wild as
the Yangtze
Seeping ever slowly
into crevices
That no one else
will ever
clean
Apr 12, 2018
Apr 12, 2018 at 8:26 PM UTC
Pyjamas?
said Ted
(straw filling his head)
'are you ready for bed?"
I am
"Oh"
he said"
He paced back and forth
with a fifth
(because he'd been down on the Bowery)
after that his language got flowery
as he got as drunk as a junk on
the Yangtze.
Mar 19, 2017
Mar 19, 2017 at 5:04 PM UTC