Wednesday, 5 February 2014

3 Poems by Changming Yuan

Human Culture

when i wake up
      and open my eyes
i see all my dreams
      bounced back from the frames

when i take a shower
      and start to sing
i taste my song tart
      behind the blurring curtain

when i strive to step
      out of my humble house
i feel fences quarreling hard
      in the whole neighborhood

when i visit around and
      do some blind sightseeing
i smell blood stained
      along the castle foot

finally i flee from this world
      and hide myself far away
i still seem to hear
      the glaring cries from the great wall

delicately hung is this earth
    a bluish cage in the universe



Snow vs Crow: A Wintry Vision

Like billions of dark butterflies
Beating their wings
Against nightmares, rather
Like myriads of
Spirited coal-flakes
Spread from the sky
Of another world
A heavy black snow
Falls, falling, fallen
Down towards the horizon
Of my mind, where a little crow
White as a lost patch
Of autumn fog
Is trying to fly, flapping
From bough to bough


American Free Speech: ‘Kill Everyone in China’

During ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live! aired on 29 October 2013, a 6-year-old boy  proposed to ‘kill everyone in China’; in reply to the wide protest against such verbal violence, the White House recently claimed, “the principle of protected free speech is an important part of who we are as a nation." 

Apparently, it is not the tiny guy
But his big parents
Who would very much like
To kill everyone in China

No, it is not even his parents
But his teachers, the picture
Books he reads, the movies he watches
The computer games he plays, and
The media bombs he hears constantly
That encourages him to do so

On the other hand, it is not the yellow-skinned
Yellow-hearted Chinese really
But anyone that has a hue different from a wasp
That may turn out more civilized, less hypocritical
Or as innocent as the little angel sitting at the ABC’s
Round Table that Uncle Sam and his dogs of war
Aim to kill, destroy, wipe out from the earth

Just to get rid of any debts they owe
To you and me

Bionote

Changming Yuan (pen name of Yuan Wuming), 7-time Pushcart nominee and author of Chansons of a Chinaman (2009) and Landscaping (2013), grew up in a remote Chinese village and published several monographs before moving to Canada as an international student. With a PhD in English from the University of Saskatchewan, Changming currently tutors in Vancouver. Most recently radio-interviewed by World Reading Series, Changming operates Poetry Pacific Press and has had poetry appearing in Best Canadian Poetry (2009; 12), BestNewPoemsOnline, Istanbul Review, LiNQ, London Magazine, Paris/Atlantic, Poetry Kanto, Poetry Salzburg, SAND, Taj Mahal Review, Threepenny Review, Two Thirds North and 800 other literary journals/anthologies across 28 countries. yuans@shaw.ca



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