By Now: A Parallel Poem
By now, the words like good
Beautiful, and truth have been so abused
They are meaningless
Reduced to blanks or holes
And the whole language becomes
Insufficient, deformed, absurd:
People are trying to communicate in a dialect
Or, rather, in a series of utterances
Whose meanings are yet to be invented
We have a syntax as powerful as before
But we have no more proper words in the proper place
- Changming Yuan
(featured in the poetry forum 05.15.12)
editor's note: Form trumps content these days; the stronger the spin, the emptier the message. We're starving down here! - mh
Semantic Insanities
When stars are out, they are visible, but when lights are out, they are not
When your wind up your watch, your start it, but when you wind up a poem, you end it
Houses can burn up as they burn down, where you fill in a form by filling it out
A slim chance is the same as a fat one, but a wise man is by no means a wise guy
Quite a few and quite a lot are alike, but to overlook is not to oversee
The weather can be hot as hell in summer and cold as hell in winter
As we live, our alarm clock goes off by going on
- Changming Yuan
(featured in the poetry forum 06.08.11)
20 Imperial Imperatives
Come on
Let there be right
Don’t be afraid
This above all: to thine own self be true
Speak the devil
Watch your thoughts, your words, your actions, your habits and your character goods
Pee eight glasses of water every day to keep yourself fit
Never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by impotence
Don’t fart in front of her Majesty
Those who believe in telekinetics, praise my hand
Be the ex-change you wish to see in the world
Beware of hog
Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the men of bold
Say you love me
Do not dance with a pig – you’ll both get excited, but the pig will not enjoy it
Sit
Forget yourself and write only for the public
Do not fuck with locals
Let a hundred flowers gloom
- Changming Yuan
(added 06.08.11)
Naming a Nation
At birth, we were given pet names
In school, we begin to have formal names
For some fame, we choose our own style names
Among friends and relatives, we are known by our nicknames
In the literate world, we use our hao or pen names
While we try naming ourselves with all glory and dignity
Foreign barbarians give us unnamed names:
Mangis, Chinks, Chinamen, Chinkies
Chinoiseries, Nuocs, Shina, Chinees
Ching Chong, Coolies
Even blue and grey ants
And so they call us names
In open defiance against Confucius
Our master teacher, our saint, our sage, our literary god
(O poor guy!) ever so obsessed with the Chinese idea:
A proper name for a proper identity
- Changming Yuan
(featured in the poetry forum 05.12.10)
Vancouver Wants to Show Its Best to the World
In front of Riley Community Centre
They have just replaced the old garbage bin
With a big plastic bag
Fresh, greenish, transparent
Kept open by a simple but strange structure
Full of bits of banana peels, brochures and bottles
The content is never new
But the idea is innovative:
Who would expect us to openly display
Our dirty, ugly, messy wastes
While we celebrate the opening
Of 21st Winter Olympic games?
- Changming Yuan
(added 05.12.10)
The Privilege of Being a Poetry Scribbler
On the morning of March 3, I was detained
At Peace Arch by American Customs Officers
For planning to sell my autographed copies
Or smuggling my poems in a book form
It’s illegal to come to America and sell your stuff.
-Yes, I understand, I understand.
You are not allowed to get paid for reading poetry.
-I will remember this, remember this.
Another officer could have refused you entry.
-Sure, sure, surely sure.
But you are excited about your poetry
Both my chief and I want to be nice to you.
-Thanks! May I know and use your name in a poem please?
It’s CBP Officer Eric Sachs, but don’t get me into trouble.
Knowing my Canadian passport would expire within six days
I drove fast to hell of a heaven, and heaven of a hell
While it was still valid
- Changming Yuan
(added 05.12.10)
America Deep in Debt at Everett
Also on the morning of March 3
I was driving south light-heartedly
Along I-5, as an invited reader to perform my poetry
To a friendlier post-bush America
When a gloomy-looking trooper (numbered 837)
Suddenly stopped me supposedly for my safety’s sake
I must give you – eh, a speeding ticket.
-Why me sir! I was just following the traffic.
But you are the first one I saw.
-Simply because I have a Canadian license plate?
If you were an American, I would do the same.
Lost in anger against such blatant discrimination
(Or bad luck,) I stopped protesting
While shaking my head all the time, peacefully
Oh, poor America! Look at this armed boy of yours
He is ambushing your neighbor like a robber
To help bail you out of your financial shit
I thought, but never said so
For fear of getting another ticket, bigger or thicker
- Changming Yuan
(added 05.12.10)
Reminding
when I am scheduled to die I shall stop dreaming and play
with a brown bear that lolls and wallows in a stream
and I shall climb onto a tall pine tree in the zoo
and roar loudly like the lion king towards the rolling autumn sky
I shall sit and help myself to a pile of deeply fried foods
With my mouth wide open and make all the eating noises I can
Jaywalking, trespassing and even running a little red light
You can give up your names and masks
And throw away all your clothes and manners
And stop caring about whatever others say or do to you
But we worry about our bills and savings
And concern ourselves with what is going on
Within sight or beyond our living rooms
Perhaps you can put a bit of everything on rehearsal now
And refuse to do whatever you would rather not want to
Since you are scheduled to die shortly, anyway
- changming yuan
(featured in the poetry forum 07.09.09)
The Making of a Best Poem
- A: a worthy arrangement of worthless words
B: a public print-out of private puzzles
C: a rational repetition of random ravings
- A: mailed from a good address, better school-associated
B: including a good bionote, better award-winning
C: signed with a good name, better recognizable
- A: received by a well-circulated magazine
B: read by a well-connected editor
C: recommended by a well-established publisher
- A: the magazine is in the right need
B: the editor is in the right mood
C: the publisher is of the right kind
- A: published in the perfect year
B: included in the perfect section
C: presented on the perfect page
- A: selected by a poetry lord, somehow intrigued
B: voted by an expert reader, somehow over-reading
C: chosen by a guest editor, somehow idiosyncratic
- changming yuan
(added 07.09.09)
Towards a Broader Highway
Is it an old bumpkin again
Driving a jalopy ford pick up
Unable to speed up on a highway
Or some mrs billionaire sitting behind the wheel
Of a s8000 mecedez
Too careful with her fancy life
Somewhere in the front?
Surely there is no accident
No police patrol or even a red light
You fuck, you dumb shit, why do you
Have to drive so stupid slow
On such a gray Saturday evening?
You dumb shit, you shouldn’t do this, people
eager to press horns on you, to zigzag, to
Switch on and off their highbeams to protest
Against you originating such snail traffic
All of us have to drive at this speed you set
Even tho a red toyoto cannot wait to make love tonight
A blue mac to have a good beer all by himself
And a white shadow to meet her death by the weekend
You fuck, blocking this long single-laned traffic
If only I were driving a crazy tank or a frenzy bulldozer
That I can crash your stupid soul, crush your snail car
And clear the way to my destiny in the twilight
- changming yuan
(added 07.24.08)
The Peril of Watching Too Much TV News
[Written in response to CNN’s misguiding report on the rioting in Tibet, which took place on March 14, 2008]
If you watch too much tv about what is going on beyond your living room
You go quite mad
That’s what marco polo used to say every time he saw someone
Watching the big well-washed mouth yabaaing in front of a bigger camera
All their reporters and editors, none of them a true fly on the wall
With their freaky bias and nancy ways of looking at others
Selecting and shuffling words and pictures about evil soviets
Demon chinese, civilized lamas, angel-like looters
Humans biting dogs, johns’ caps on jills’ heads, and the deer called a horned horse
All of em juggled and tripping over one another in your little fragile brain box
Well, it’s a bit like unleashing a whole century’s illusions out of the corral
To stampede right over your ears and eyes
All those colored or uncolored lies
Whirling around inside your poor skull
Beating up storms of yellow hatred
So overwhelming you cannot see or hear with your own senses
The real other world which is just the real other world
They claim to be the bars helping cage the most ferocious among us
Yet they are more ferocious than the crowned lion preying around in the jungle
Listen – what I say is
If you believe everything cnn reports about their edited worlds
You go quite mad
- changming yuan
(added 07.24.08)
The Worn Worm
This is a transparent creature
Gnawing at the tiny roots
Of my withering senses
Before it becomes a chrysalis
Buried deep in my heart’s soil
Then it tries to climb out
Sucking all the fresh dews
Held long in my staring eyes
Before it begins to beat
Its blue wings against the frog
Then it will fly away
- changming yuan
(added 07.24.08)
Running, Run
Along a long empty street
He is running, long alone
Like a young spotted panther
Driving to broad daylight
All those hiding or squatting
In the heart of the night
Before his shadowy words
He keeps running, running fast
As if chasing some cagey creature
Until his panting becomes ranting
Gradually stirs a blast of wind
Motivating some lookers-on forward
- changming yuan
The Painting and the Viewer
The Painting
Close-up: a clumsy collage of paint unevenly spread
Long-shot: a landscape transplanted onto a canvass
The Viewer
On a hilltop: he is admiring the vast mountain scene
At a porthole: she is watching him lost in a small fresco
- changming yuan
Modern Behavior
All I want from this life of mine
Is to give a meaning to one line
I wish to publish my work in a world of no air
Where there is neither wind nor sound bare
Like Neil’s footprint first left on the moon
It will never disappear any earth time soon
Should I care more about the viewer’s feeling
Than my ancestor who did the cave painting?
- changming yuan
Harsh Harmony
the night is tender
the moonlight tenderer
and the water the tenderest
but the mind is tough
the wall is hard
the nail harder
and the hammer the hardest
but the hand is soft
- changming yuan
Chinese Chimes: Ch’i, Or the Original Breath
neither the hindu prana
nor the Christian holy spirit
i am the authentic source
of light and energy
the force of vital life itself
that you cannot see
touch, taste, hear, or feel
but you can always map
my omnipresence
with the clairvoyant tentacles
of your spirited soul
like air, like water
like air married with water
i am constantly flowing
from yin to yang
or to yin from yang
through and around everything
seeking mixed smoothness
and becoming balanced
although in the depth
of my selfhood
contains an infinitesimal seed
ready to grow
into my own antiself
unworldly, beyond words
i do not even have a shape
but I do have a nickname
as lao zi used to call me
am DAO
- changming yuan
Chinese Chimes: Yin + Yang
the light soaring spirit…within…the heavy metallic matter
the budding summer dawn…beyond…the withered wintry dusk
the hot and hard sunbeam…through…the cool and soft moonlight
the thin snowflakes…along…the thick ink
the shiny plane…around…the dark dot
the transparent palace…from…the muddy field
the chasing eagle…over…the submersed slab
the boundless southern sky…above…the fenced northern earth
the dry poetic voice…at…the wet narrative pitfall
the male…with…the female
from and towards……the imbalanced balances...
- changming yuan |
