Banana* Blues: For Langston Hughes
I’m bluer than blue
A branch thicker than the root
A banana unlike any other fruit
But my growth has been severed and burned
Like a scale with weight it cannot measure
The music of my white soul
Is melancholy, oppressed
Singing without words
Confined within black bars
I’m bluer than blue
A composer without compositions
A conductor without a baton
To even guide himself
The song beats away as
I’m singing my blues
*American/British/Canadian born Chinese (ABC/BBC/CBC's) are often referred to as 'bananas' because they are yellow-skinned but 'white-hearted.'
*
Wondering When My Life Began
The instant? an infinitesimal sperm from my father?
Penetrated into my mother’s egg? on a dark ? night
The second? my little head ? was pushed and pulled
Right? Out of my mother’s teenager? womb?
Or the minute? I hit a brick? broke my forehead
And thus got my first scar? (memory?)
With? no awareness of any earlier? childhood
When? or where? did my life? begin on earth?
Immortality
No, I don’t want to live foreverish, nor do I
Care to attain permanence through a few lines
Of English words, but just download my
Self-consciousness into a chip, or
Upload it onto a file, and I can grow into
An integrated part of the universe (until all
Is sucked someday into the singularity)
To explode in another big bang
Basic Punctuation Marks
, before any utterances from God
. behind the human reality in the moment
? after each sentence written in history
! at the end of every show of nature
Two Mnemonic Poems
1/ Coordinative Conjunctions: Fanboys
For all the hills or mountains
And rivers you have seen in your life
Neither of the two kinds is really beautiful on its own
But when a river embraces a mountain
Or the other way around, they become a holy view
Yet you can never see it with your naked eyes
So try to connect with fanboys in a run-on sentence
2/ Lakes in North America: Homes
Huron is your residence, while
Ontario is mine. Once you sail cross
Michigan, you will be able to join the waters of
Erie, where your spirits will evaporate even higher than
Superior, the hub of all streams, rivers and watery dreams
Bionote
Allen Qing Yuan, author of Traffic Light, is a 2-time Pushcart and 2-time Best of the Net nominee. A co-editor of Poetry Pacific, Allen is graduating from the University of British Columbia. Since grade 10, Allen has had poetry appear in more than 70 literary publications across 16 countries, which include Cordite Poetry Review, Literary Review of Canada, Poetry Scotland, Shampoo and Spillway.
I’m bluer than blue
A branch thicker than the root
A banana unlike any other fruit
But my growth has been severed and burned
Like a scale with weight it cannot measure
The music of my white soul
Is melancholy, oppressed
Singing without words
Confined within black bars
I’m bluer than blue
A composer without compositions
A conductor without a baton
To even guide himself
The song beats away as
I’m singing my blues
*American/British/Canadian born Chinese (ABC/BBC/CBC's) are often referred to as 'bananas' because they are yellow-skinned but 'white-hearted.'
*
Wondering When My Life Began
The instant? an infinitesimal sperm from my father?
Penetrated into my mother’s egg? on a dark ? night
The second? my little head ? was pushed and pulled
Right? Out of my mother’s teenager? womb?
Or the minute? I hit a brick? broke my forehead
And thus got my first scar? (memory?)
With? no awareness of any earlier? childhood
When? or where? did my life? begin on earth?
Immortality
No, I don’t want to live foreverish, nor do I
Care to attain permanence through a few lines
Of English words, but just download my
Self-consciousness into a chip, or
Upload it onto a file, and I can grow into
An integrated part of the universe (until all
Is sucked someday into the singularity)
To explode in another big bang
Basic Punctuation Marks
, before any utterances from God
. behind the human reality in the moment
? after each sentence written in history
! at the end of every show of nature
Two Mnemonic Poems
1/ Coordinative Conjunctions: Fanboys
For all the hills or mountains
And rivers you have seen in your life
Neither of the two kinds is really beautiful on its own
But when a river embraces a mountain
Or the other way around, they become a holy view
Yet you can never see it with your naked eyes
So try to connect with fanboys in a run-on sentence
2/ Lakes in North America: Homes
Huron is your residence, while
Ontario is mine. Once you sail cross
Michigan, you will be able to join the waters of
Erie, where your spirits will evaporate even higher than
Superior, the hub of all streams, rivers and watery dreams
Bionote
Allen Qing Yuan, author of Traffic Light, is a 2-time Pushcart and 2-time Best of the Net nominee. A co-editor of Poetry Pacific, Allen is graduating from the University of British Columbia. Since grade 10, Allen has had poetry appear in more than 70 literary publications across 16 countries, which include Cordite Poetry Review, Literary Review of Canada, Poetry Scotland, Shampoo and Spillway.
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