Poetry / November 2011 (Issue 15)


Chinese Calligraphic Impressions

by Louis Marvin

Affirmation of Growth (Sheng Zhang)

        This little sprout takes a long time to reach the sun
 
 
Smile and Laugh (Wei Xiao  Xiao)

        A bee on a flower
                A tumbling puppy

        Several syrups
                The last ice cream bar

            The family doing family things
                    Studied for, grade received

        Favorite kind of song
                    The birds singing in the trees
                                       

Courage and Love (Yong Qi  Ai)

    There are little earthquakes and rainy floods, there are heated days and shivering cold nights too.  We huddle together in courage and love.
    We are walking up the kid to the heights, where her mother and I will walk back down alone.
    From this perch she will design her life.  With maybe a little tear in her eye as she sees our backs walk down to the low grounds she came from.
    Sometimes it might be lonely at the top.
    We don't stay and bask in the glories from the top.  We look from afar, from below, from a place where our love and courage fades.
 
 
Journey (Lu Cheng)

        We start the journey dark olive green

                we cannot retrace or go back
                    once we have turned pink, red, blue or black

                        you can't get back to that green

        you can't be a blood cell
                going backwards in the arteries of life           
 
 
Surrender to Patience (She Qi   Nai Xin)

        A most regal and majestic mountain
                was slowly washed away into the earth

            by the simple raindrop
                    one and one million at a time

        in a day
                a week
                    a billion years                                      
   
 
Miracle (Qi Ji)

    Into a pitch black night, a spark of light extends to warm our hearts and minds.  How did man find this miracle?  Did lightning strike, and he found the fresh fire frying the branch.  He felt warmth, he saw where he could see none before.  He saw the animals were afraid of it, and they backed up or ran away into this same cold night.
    He ate raw meat, raw fish and all was raw and uncooked.  Until he tried to put it into the new light thing of warmth.  And it made the meat sizzle and it smelled good.

        Into the mind of man and beast           
            this new controlled orange light did creep
                they were not running from lightning strikes
                    the fire did not chase them

        Man had harnessesd it, tamed it, owned it
                                miracle                

 
Fu Fu

    When I met you at Hale Koa, was it love at first sight?  Or was it a few days and nights?  Was it meant to be, a freedom thing, a fairy tale to last ever after.  Screams, shouts, shaking heads and rollings eyes, and laughter.
    Old married couples, what do they do?  Besides grow old together with their intertwined memories.
    Mine are painted Chinese red and gold.  Mine have rice and fish.  Mine smell like Chinatown herbs and cooking teas.
    Mine continue to grow like bamboo, with incense in the air, and bells and gongs lightly chiming in the breeze.
    Old couples, what do they do?


Wisdom (Zhi)


        There was a paradigm, in which a man who grows older and wiser
                realizes that it must be him coming to accept ways

                    that lack a certain character
                        lack a certain moral fiber

        Ways where the ends justifies means,
                    and he feels that after 14+ years
                        there will not be change for the better

            There will be a certain
                top of the hill, cock of the walk
                    I'm better than you because????

            But, in reality the rigged game
                    the nepotism

        the undeserved cronyism
                the “local” above character, above right

            This is the downfall, and the legacy we leave to our children

        Thus, the old man cried at his wisdom acquired
                    after great lengths of time

            He wiped his eyes with his beard
                    and realized he would forever
                        be a cactus in a bed of seaweed

                Their salt poured forever
                    into wounds

                So the wisdom, now promotes healing

            let them forever float unanchored
                    in this sea of bitter backbiting                   
 
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