破镜重圆

There is a story in China about a man and his wife who were forced to be separated. Before they parted, they took a mirror and divided it into two pieces (mirrors weren't usually glass back then and was most likely bronze). They agreed to try and find each other at a certain time in a market.

The man showed up at the market and found his wife's mirror but no wife. Because of strife with war, she had been taken into the house of the conquering army's general, who hoped to woo her. The husband scratched a poem onto the mirror to let his wife know that he was alive and still loved her. When she read the poem she cried tears of both happiness and sadness, joy and despair, for though she rejoiced that he was unharmed, she saw no way out of her current predicament.

However, the general (who really wasn't that bad a guy), saw that she was sad and discovered the whole story. Moved by their love and fidelity, he arranged for the couple to be rejoined.

The phrase, a broken mirror joined anew is used thus to describe a couple who has been parted and then reunited with each other.

Wergild (2) . . . . written over four years after the first

fat belly-house, left alone tonight
today and probably tomorrow
thoughts of late hemorrhagic fever
coupled with rising water pressure
leave little left for restful nights

there are none to offer advice
save the lipstick sages who taught (teach)
love is a trap and your house a prison
freedom is a personal choice, but never
decisions are
confused with results
tomorrow will have breath and steps and

the scraped emptiness is only for today
tomorrow is forever

two empty beds in the house of the house
no one sleeps there anymore
sleep is a luxury for the living
empty belly-house cries in the corner

the cavernous hole mourns its loss
tomorrow it will be filled
tomorrow is forever

Will she hear me as we sleep,
Or has the past been buried under
Years quilted of pain?
Every night she cries and cries
Out, while closed eyes glimpse
Visions I'm unable to perceive.
Morning brings no answers,
But damp pillows left the sign
Of lost dreams before the dawning light.

Will she hear me? As we sleep,
Somnifacient plans stir memories
That tell me how to reach her.
Tonight, I'll solve the mystery
Of our dreams, and say what
Dreaming, I wish I'd long since said.

Will she hear me as we sleep
Tonight? Will she finally see all
I've longed to say; all we've longed to love?

Will she hear me as we sleep?


the print was made by Meredith
she has always heard me

Wergild (1)

Murky gray lights paint an unrequested
     Picture of regrettable inconvenience.
Justifiable actions leave septic residues
     That tense muscles are unable to wipe
     Away from impending contractions.

What fearsome creatures are born
     From midnight raids on honor!
Still incapable of independent malice,
     They endanger there mother's mere
     By existing in hemorrhagic innocence.

Cold hands are guided by sterile emotions
     Hidden behind a mask of professionalism.
Sedated memories fail to notice that while
     Scraping clean a softening past,
     Dilations stretch now into a lifetime.

Waking to the empty reality of unalterable
     Decisions, the price has been paid,
But never in full.  Casual comforts do little
     Against the rising of bile-tinged regrets or the
     Bitter tears expelled with breaths never taken.

a Series of Titles

I often find myself using the same title from a poem again and again. I love titles and never quite seem to get all the mileage out of them that I feel they deserve. "in the Center" is one such title. For those who know, China in Chinese means the middle country, or sometimes, the center country. What I've just posted are four entries (all of them to date) written during my Chinese classes here in Shanghai.

Lethe, Wergild, and the two-fold titular Treading Watercolors are others that have been recurring dreams for me. I hope you enjoy.

And if you don't, I hope then that you find someone else's verse to brighten (or darken) your day.

in the Center (4)

In the city, distance fades from reality
time is the only mark
of significance. Embryonic shells
cannot shatter the stone of unerring
physicality, but the paths traversed
exist only in the temporality of passage.
I do not understand how anything
exists in consecutive yet separated
spaces. Movement, the province
of time, is illusion. I have
ever stood still, yet time has moved
me across the world and robbed
us of each other.

Perhaps in unrelenting diligence
the stone shatters, and time
will yet repent of her interference.

in the Center (3)

I have not yet put away childish

thoughts, though darkly shines

the immense difficulty of hope

for this glass to be unshattered.

Will the moon ever again shine so bright

or will perhaps the veins of silver,

though seeming dull, glow all the

more beautiful for the rejoining?

in the Center (2)

the center doesn’t hold
it falls apart from the middle,
even while the rim spins ever faster
the point of absolute immovability
tears a hole
in sodden streets
and touching the sky
the bricks come falling down
the barbarians to the south
see the edge of reason
a Western woman is wanted
but the wall of logic holds it out, not in
a woman, in your house, rests peace
but only away from the collapse
will the world spin
a spoke does not turn
a wheel, nor does the axle,
time touches both but slowly

in the Center (1)

The subway vultures circle

but three more stops until they

pick the bones off empty space.

Once the chastiser, food poison keeps head down

and eyes off the wrinkled limping farm

and that fat young belly-house.

To stand is agony, white becomes pale,

both become beauty in the night,

pale glows ghostly, when the neon

girls see, they fall in love with the

furnished thought of wealth.

Two stops until the incessant leech

attempts to trade seats and information.

No blood for them, I speak their

language, spitting it into the gaping

holes of ethnocentric infallibility.

Leech eats his surprise and it grows

faceward. Farm and belly-house leave and

one stop remains until cramped quarters.

Left, unfilled emptiness wants for

attention, but when love and fear mingle

the balance tips my favor. Set

shoulders make paths and expert

eyes unfocus umbrellas and scarves.

Down and out, through narrow straits,

the cool night air still reeks of filth.