16-7-1998

   The only way is to choose God and leave everything to Jesus, as being too tired and exhausted.

   Your eyes make me collapse. One will be hurt again and again without setting up defenses.

   Dad, I am too far away from your expectations. I have to start a new life.

   "Sorry"

   Silence spreads out the sky.

17-7-1998

JAZZ

A hot sweaty night   A lover suddenly-arrived

A field vast and wild

A thoughtful pallid man   A silly kind woman

A house under renovation

A thread of odd light   A long disjointed talk

Two bewildered faces

Kisses without passions   Eyes with desire at times

Oh, a night

A night to be forgotten by sadness

A lover suddenly-arrived

A house being renovated

A field vast and wild

"My brethren, count it all joy when we fall into divers temptations; Knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience. But let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing."

James1

22-7-1998

The rain on the first day of August

pours down the secrets of the sky.

Sad branches

swing in the wind.

1-8-1998

LORD, are you walking in the clouds, cruelly and leisurely?

Mystery

A boy with big eyes and

pure cheek

knocks at my door suddenly to

inquire secrets.

Words

The little boy with canine teeth

and local dialect

gros into a young tree

secretly loved

by the woman rich in words

3-8-1998

O

---- To Heldrin, Haizi and Hanbo

three brothers,

they become family members after death

finally rest serenely

in the remote place not having a thing to their name.

 Flooding season

Flooding season

Poet sets out

sailing along the river

going downstream---

witnessing a lot

the roofs, trunks and the dead.

On the boundless river

only the king and the river

6-8-1998

After the rain

A glance at noon

determines the end of world.

On the poor and wild land

poems are born

king is born

without mother and without love.

7-8-1998

   The speciality

born from the sun, die for the sun and melt into the sun.

8-8-1998

Summer

he night before I leave the city

Rain

Rain

Rain

Winter comes in advance

I become ---

the way you want me to.

15-8-1998

Yunnan

Clouds

are waiting above the mountains for ---

my return

You

are the blue in the sky

I

am the blue on the ground.

17-8-1998

   A yellow straw hat suddenly arrives here walking back and forth along the shiny streets. The blue cotton-print shirt bursts out the unexpected youth. In the sky there are full of your blue eyes gazing sharply at my nervousness in the morning.

   SISTER DRUM strikes the sad morning. In every piece of the music, there are your drumbeats, your hands changing wonderfully the rhyme, the tone and the color of the sky --- changing the dreams, changing the campfire in the light of Africa --- my dancing feet are rotating, stars are shining and the night is deep, misty and pure.

   I ask you through the music, " where are you?"

   --- the voice murmurs, becoming part of the music.

   It smells a bit sweaty in the air... CONSENTRATE...RELAX...let me have the first illusion in my life. Let it rest on the white paper.

   Jiaqing, at this time, Bangkok must be shining brilliantly. (I recall the first time I met you. The sunlight floored the balconney of the small hotel in Lijiang, Yunnan. It outlined a golden silhouette of you in lonely silence. Yes, Jiaqing, I had never expected your coming into my life from the sunshine of that afternoon...) Shangri-la, the hometown of our souls. Black steeds, fine cows and sheep. The lambent eyes of Napahai's children immerse into the fog of the plateau --- I want to whip the horse on wildly. Jiaqing, your drumbeats chase me, let me suffocate.

   Rereading makes me dimmed with tears, however what I am yearning is to reread you,

   Jiaqing

   I do not want the waiting becomes endless and meaningless. I want to continue its fragments, its voice, and its fragrance, to let it occupy me in deep secret. Your silhouette in the light of night is like so much the father in youth, the father in love.

   At that time, mother was so beautiful. Dark braids twined around the waist.

   Taste it again and again. The skin burns a little bit. Do you remember?

18-9-1998

   Are you smoking too?  Now

   Just in different backgrounds. Behind you there is India in the color of orange. Shadows, black eyes hidden from the linen cloth and footstep moving slowly around… at that time you with only a pair of blue eyes through the lens and the blue sky in India attentively looked at me who had nothing except white paper and black words.

   To commemorate--- that night with moon bright above the sky, the Chinese city you love, the green square, the mother's rusty-red long dresses and too much long black hair.

   "HAVE YOU SEEN IT, MY CHILD?”

   Think about that joke sad enough to wither easily. That only rose like the inverted inflection of dreams rocked in the water. You said you would cross the wide river if I had promised to marry you then… beer, coffee and night tea, why people all over the world need these. I forgot to tell you the way you smoke looked very nice, especially nice…

   (oh, the stranger in Deli. The heavy rain pours from the sky and big raindrops fall off. The black and blue eyes look away to the distant places through the aged wooden windows… I am not coming from the remote place. I am merely an always-drifting native of this place. I want to see her eyes, in different countries, in different crowds finding her black eyes. )

"And whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If ye shall ask any thing in my name, I will do it."

   Tonight pray with me, Jiaqing, let us pray for the promise of return.

To be continued...