What is poetry which does not save /Nations or people? -Czeslaw Milosz
Hi All
if you are around Shanghai, please come to this world poetry day reading organized by Literary Shanghai, I’ll be reading three of my new poems, namely
1. Reading Transtroemer
2.Death In The Factory
3.Something About Yongjia Road
Thursday, March 21, 7pm
Venue: Ocean Grounds Coffee Roasters, Hong Kong Plaza Mall, 283 Huaihai Zhong Lu (Jinling Road entrance, ground floor). 淮海中路283号香港广场北座1-09A, 近黄陂南路 Metro: Huangpi Road
Cheers
A,H
Just a few falling houses,
A deserted driveway,
A bell tower se-
vered
from time
and melting snow
where the script
of a grey cloud is written, zen-like
by the hands
of an oriental calligrapher.
A lot of broken symbols,
language with no words
*published on the amazing magazine ink in thirds where you can read the full volume of amazing poems and prose
I was recently rejected by the creative writing program at Cornell University, and I don’t think I can make it to Brown, NYU or Boston. It’s my second effort to try to become a candidate in writing. I know it’s a reach for someone like me whose mother tongue is not English to get admitted to an English writing program, it does not mean I’m a failure ( maybe I am, who knows, maybe I love to play the role of Don Quixote), it means it will take me longer to get there, longer than most English speakers to write some god-damn good poems and it’s definitely a very lonely journey. But I’m on my way. I keep on failing; I fail better each time. This is enough for me.
Many Thanks for Ink in Thirds for publishing my poem, this is exactly what I need for now right before my 30th birthday.
A.H
And the wind
in the woods,
No burgeoning red
of a late autumn.
but green like the fern,
almost eternal.
The sun
showering sparks;
A white egret
on a low-hanging sky.
In the embracing waves
of the sea,
Blue El Nido,
A hundred boats adrift,
A hundred swarthy faces,
A hundred commercial boards
exotic
on a street speaking little English.
A hundred coconut trees,
A hundred shapes of seashells,
A hundred still blooming flowers
quiet
on the sand soft as milk.
I’m one of many
unworthy tourists
walking into a tropical
bliss,
lotophagi,
黃泉，
no time and space
saved
when a boy comes running,
his voice
grey
in a land of many colors;
his words,
in Tagalog,
meaning home.
*published on Anak Sastra, where you can read the full poem about El Nido
For Tomas Transtroemer
The line he draws on his notebook
stretches out, endlessly,
with the sound of an axe cutting the air,
and continues its silent judgement, where
the world is halved.
I’m on one side;
My deeds the other, falling soundlessly;
A rebuke—
I cast my thought over
into the realm of inanity.
It bounces like a morning dew
on lifeless leaves.
Air is thinner there
than a breath.
I grab hold of the line —the edge of existence,
saved by an old hypothesis
of death.
published at Thirty West Publishing House
1.
The morning heat
breaks through the window
and warps
the dream
into a hot reality.
8 o’clock,
the fateful hour of awakening,
reminded
by a ticking watch,
with almost the same rhythm
of the heart.
A moaning summer,
dying in the yards.
Some arranged flowers
yellow
from a sad florist.
2
The scorching south wind，
breath
of Feilian, coming to all
in cities or villages.
A wash of tolling bells.
thick shadows
hidden
behind a mottled wall
and a murmuring crowd of people
squatting at the gate
of a silent neighborhood.
Published at Thirty West Publishing House
