What follows are several poems that I wrote immediately after arriving in Beijing:
Upon the Footsteps of Dawn
Or
The Grand Tour Begins
Upon the footsteps of dawn I will walk
East as East will go,
Through the Gate of Heaven I will fly
to the end of centuries,
Within the great halls of Red Mansions
I will head towards the birth of the sun,
Over ten thousand generations of man I
will climb to the center of the world,
Here I shall grow my young soul,
And gain wisdom,
And know peace,
And find love.
Sinosized to one size fits all and
bursting at the seams,
Into my head they have poured baijiu
mercury and jade,
This poor Cowboy is drunken and does
not understand the meaning,
If any at all.
All and all and all along I try to
avoid the pitfalls of
what Master Tzu said.
The Tao that none may speak of tells me
just to fall;
even at the bottom is a lesson to be
learned,
but it is not the truth,
truth speaks not but only shows.
But when I am seen,
When I am found and lost is home,
Will home find me lost in a land of
strangers,
Or of my kin.
Shall this cowboy grow,
Become 8-legged and run through the
halls of Confucian thought,
Even trade the horse for the pen,
The constant gun fire for the Five
Constants.
He would and he will,
Gladly he soon shall trade his
ancestor’s halls of stone for Mansions of Red,
Figs for persimmons,
Oak and cedar for bamboo,
The Queen’s for The Chairman’s,
One chapter for the next.
Untitled
It’s funny, really, what can happen
over a cigarette,
Lung cancer, enlightenment, romance,
Or a move to Beijing.
Maybe next time, I will happen upon
myself.
Untitled
The bats of chaoyang fly low, letting
me know that happiness is within reach;
The automobile drivers are erratic -
telling me death is closer.
In Behai I happened upon a Buddha,
He was silent on the matter.