Mid-night

I hear waves
languages of many rivers
unweaving, wounds, stars
something has jumped
out of my skin

El hueco de una hormiga pueda llenar el aire¹
pero tu vas gimiendo sin norte por mis ojos

The chill quickening

summons ancient ghosts
whose pain I long to taste
blossom of black gold
echoing the flue
of a night traveler

Xianren youdai cheng huanghe²
haike wuxin sui baiou

I dare not make a sound
in the bosom of your indfference
face to face I sit
conversing
with the unchanging river
I lend my ears to the wind
who would not hear a word

1 The emptied space of an ant can fil the air/ but you moan with nothing to guide you through my eyes --Federico Garcia Lorca
2 A Taoist immortal waits for a yellow crane to take flight/ A seafarer, willy-nilly, folows the white gulls --Li Bai(Po)

ars erotica

it's about surrender
like a bum
after a three-day
belt-tightening--
the unorthodox fasting,
running to the aroma
of a pot of oyster stew
or a pint of thick,
foamy brew...

in our shaded nakedness
we are all bums
and willingly
we let out
a beast cry
befor the ritual
in the thick-aired room
the spring palace
oblivious
preposterous,
the happiest bums we are

that's how a bum should
ummm, fuck,
hump and bump
the honest ploughman
seeding the dark soil,
the opening earth
under the deep digging
rut and the oldest song
hummed into
your ear
that's how we like it
bely down & belly up
while i teach you
the sweetest dirty
chinese words
yun & yu,
clouds and rain
meaning: two hungry
lovers becoming one

words are magin
ancient and new
words we throw
into the fire:
you, the crazy pheonix
me, the our-of-sea dragon
and love could be made
when we surrender
to the remotest codes
of our savage tribes
& barbarian ancestors
....

we have swam
from the humid nights
of a northern chineses city
to the salty smell
of oregon coast...
a pair of mandrin ducks
flirting with water &
that's how we like it
swimming and mating
like ducks,
the fluttering feathers
& the hooked slender necks

my hot tears
& boiling saliva
burning your vagina--
vagina envy
the whole city
is on fire
upward
heavenward
headlong
horses galloping
stars exploding
that's how we like it

that's how we enter
a poem--
doggy style

a halfpulled scabbard
like a bum can't wait
for the signal
from the benevolent
and that is what
keeps us from getting
buried alive.

Human's Last Charity

A bird came
on a rainy morning
outside our window
pecking at the yelow seeds

I watched
through the grray strand of smoke
from the cigarette
dying between my fingers, motionless
to keep my visitor undisturbed

The bird kept chewing
seeds of my thoughts, thankless.
The sky shedding tears, soundless.
Why does it bother me?

He fled
into the veil of rain
left me, wordless
in the cage...

Trust

I listened to the voices of blackened lungs
In my eighty-year-old eyes
The sun was closer to me
Than the lght on the edge of an ink-stone

I was not fed on words in a silver spoon
But the asphalt road under my feet was golden indeed
The mud and the sewer on a sunny morning--
The open wound

They told me I was wrong
My first metaphor for a wrong landscape
O you glory, forgive me
for not giving a shit for your song
...

At thirty, I'm half licked
As in Molock, I'm about to choose
A cauldron of honey or a cauldron
Of cuttlefish juice. A little trust

It takes some salt to iron out
The rusty tongue fresh from the womb
Say a word and live with it
Sing it out loud before the heart is broken.

Breaking the heart with tongue in cheek
Now it's too late to erase the prints
Of the bird. A parrot drinks diet coke
I crawl back into the barbarian skull.