China Stories

Coming from within the kids' bathroom I heard the unmistakable sounds of children laughing, a pause, some low sounds that I could not quite make out from where I was, then the loud sound of laughter once more. Walking across the classroom, the low sounds became clearer, as a picture was painted as to what the children were doing in the bathroom when they were supposed to be getting changed after having some fun summer wat...

We boil spring water to make tea, Sitting on a grassy knoll above the water.The waterfall continues as it has always done,Ten thousand years with little change.How many lovers have sat as we have,Happy and content above this spring?I'm a cautious man,But this woman's a water dragon.She takes off all her clothes,And leaps in from our heights above.AD 865

The low hum of twenty cement trucks permeated the construction site. Six trucks lined the edges of the pour site, while ten more idled in a long line around the perimeter ready to replace the others as soon as they had completed the evacuation of their mixers. Once the pour started, it would continue without interruption for twenty hours. Laying the foundations of a skyscraper is a very precise and methodical process. Any...

Two months ago I spent 31 days backpacking China. I didn’t write much on my adventure, but here are the poems I wrote on the trains or in the mountains. A Sun Kissed Phoenix From Dali She stood in the aisle, Sun kissed through the windows of the train, Like Zhou Yu’s ghost. She stood as though She wanted my eyes upon her, She smiled as though She knew they were. She looked left and right and back But she wouldn’t look my...

Adderall sunshine lights me upBefore a swift northeastern wind Cools me under black clouds. Aqua stains old poems When Bedouin rain drops Descend upon us from the dune like cumulus. The dust and sweat of China Wash down from the bill of my hat Mixing in with the Georgia red Like some earthy consummation of the love in my heart for both. Cold curtains wrap around me Sending a shiver through me. I was caught up in a poem Wh...

The night I was born, was the calm before the storm of war.  The air was cool and pleasant, sparing the crops and gardens from the cruel death of frost. Traveling in soft whorls, the wind urged the leaves to whisper, and yet kept the fires tame. Ponds rippled and settled, ever so often revealing the flash of swimming scales. The sky was dark, permitting the world to see the majesty of the brilliant stars, all working toge...

I had decided to visit Shanghai with the flurry of movement that invaded the city at that point in time after the war. This decision I took for my interest in the city, but mainly because of my subconscious desire to escape mounting debts, and an unrequited love back home in Marseilles. I took up a low, unglamorous room in the French quarter of the city, hardly surrounded by friends- but at least people living on the same...