Angels Dancing

 
Chasing Raven
—Poems by Changming Yuan, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
—Photos by Katy Brown, Davis, CA

MY CROW

Perching long in my heart
Is a white crow that no one has
Ever seen, but everyone longs
To be

Always ready
To fly out, hoping to bring back
A glistening seed or a colorful feather
As if determined to festoon its nest

 Raven Landing

HOW COME

You
Really
Me?
   
    She
    Us?
         I
        You?
               He
               Them?
One
Oneself?
        We
        You?
               It
               Us?
They
         Him/
               Her?

 Water Abstract

KATE: the Name Given to a First Child

K:      an other basket
          you hold whatever with a shape
          but sand or water

A:      As the first born to the Semitic family, A was originally a picture of an alef, the
          Agricultural energy that was rotated twice until
          Alpha loomed up in the Greek psychoscape even before
          Adam became the chosen father of all Europeans close to
          Athens, where Apollo had acupunctured wisdom and knowledge into
          Aristotle, the intellectual ancestor of modern man, who inspired
          Alexander to make the first effort of globalization, which did not reach East
          Ah Q’s land, the largest hotel for All travelers until centuries later, but it is
          Atomic bombs that will blow up all our pasts and send us through
          America to a higher civilization, where the drop of an
          Apple is to enable us to fly to the other side of the universe
          Along the cosmic string as Africa, the heart of human darkness, awaits for 

          Jesus, Allah, Buddha or an other unknown author to come and rotate for the third time
          A scarlet letter of A

T:      the Egyptian loaf
         far off the Phoenician mark
         is still edible now

E:      born to be a double reed that can be bent into a long vowel
         the most frequently used letter in English, echoing endlessly in silences
         if pulled down, it offers two doors, one leading to Soul via will, the other
         to Him via wisdom; if turned up right, it forms a mountain with three peaks
         like three holy swords, pointing high
         one against the sun
         one against the moon
         one against the sky
         facing always towards the east, it embraces
         existence, equality, eternity, emancipation... 

 Full Moon Setting

LET ALONE

Man, as he really is, is far beyond God’s
Imagination, let alone understanding

If you really love Earth, you wouldn’t be
Afraid to show it to the world, let alone her

Most websites don’t even last fourteen
Months, let alone fourteen years

They never thought they’d be able to do
Any serious reading, let alone thinking

Some people can’t help inventing lies
Let alone telling them

The sun shines on you but not on me
Let alone my shadow

I always expect the world to leave me
Alone, let alone my poetry

 Wave Action

MODERN METAPHYSICS

Few are really aware of
        Such universes
Existing beyond our own

Even fewer of so many other versions
        Of selfhood living
In each of them, let alone
This simple secret:

At the depth of consciousness
        Lives a quantum
    Or soul as we prefer to call it
A particle, demon and/or angel dancing

The same dance afar, far apart
In an entanglement

 Rune

SPIRITUAL TRANSFORMATION

Every organism is an algorithm, Harari writes

           Your soul’s data may have been deleted from the file
Opened in her smartphone. Each soul occupies more than—
                                    Every consciousness less than—

The maximum space for a whim, a mind, a cosmos is

                        As vast as—

Outside an apple-shaped house, children
     Are playing with apple-shaped balloons,
                                                 A godlin is running amuck

            Around its ancestors sapiens

Used to be hunted and haunted by an apple-shaped—

 Rapture in Song

DAOIST HARMONY BETWEEN MAN AND NATURE

One Way // One Innerself

Two opposites // body and soul

Four seasons // four limbs

Five elements // five senses

Seven days // seven emotions (sins?)

Twelve months // twelve energy channels

Twenty-four hours or solar terms // twenty-four spine vertebrae

Thirty-hundred sixty-five days // so many meridian points

All so exactly correlated, corresponding, cooperative
To be balanced…

 Tangle

THE COLLABORATION

Whether made of wood, bamboo
Or metal, we go intimately
Like a pair of chopsticks

Together we pick up
A slippery dumpling, or throw away
A leaf far from fresh

Sometimes in a parallel position, other
Times with a slight angle between, but
Always working together in duo

To taste every dish
On the one and
The same table 

LONGING

The very idea of you
Tangoing afar
As in an entanglement
With that of me

Beating tranquility
Of two rainbow-like hearts
Hung in the sky, crying aloud
In one and the same muted voice:

I miss you

 Raven

Today’s LittleNip:

MEETING
—Changming Yuan

            For the rendezvous
The bird has long arrived
   
But where is the wind?

 Changming Yuan

_____________________

Our thanks to Katy Brown for her wonderful photos, and welcome to Changming Yuan (real name: Wuming Yuan), 8-time Pushcart nominee and author of Chansons of a Chinaman (2009) and Politics and Poetics (2009). Changming grew up in an impoverished village and became an ESL student at 19 in Shanghai. He published several monographs before leaving China. With a PhD in English from the University of Saskatchewan, Changming currently tutors in Vancouver. Probably the world's most widely published poetry author who speaks Mandarin but writes English, Yuan has poetry appearing in more than 900 literary journals/anthologies across 30 countries, including Asia Literary Review, Barrow Street, Best Canadian Poetry (2009, 2012, 2014), BestNewPoemsOnline, In Other Words, Istanbul Literary Review, Kwani?, LiNQ, London Magazine, Paris/Atlantic, Poetry Kanto, Poetry Salzburg Review, SAND, Saraba Magazine, Taj Mahal Review, Threepenny Review and Two Thirds North. Together with Allen Qing Yuan, Changming edits and publishes Poetry Pacific at poetrypacific.blogspot.ca/, and he publishes a blog at yuanspoetry.blogspot.com/.

Welcome to the Kitchen on this lucky Friday the 13th, Changming, and don’t be a stranger!

—Medusa

Splash!

 Celebrate the sparkle and splash of poetry!
—Photo by Katy Brown, who has been visiting the North Coast 

and brings us back these many spectacular snapshots of the sea…

Photos in this column can be enlarged by clicking on them once,
then click on the X in the top right corner to come back
to Medusa.