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Time Whitewashed in Snow
Hesitantly, the snowflakes keep
Swinging around until their final fall
Swinging around until their final fall
To the ground, in thickening stillness
As the present becomes gradually
Assimilated to the past (or future?)
All in a wild white world of fairy tales
Beyond Time
It took hundreds… of thousands …of years
For …homo erectus to evolve …into sapiens
And longer …for chimpanzees to …erectus
But …engineering ourselves …by way of
Biochemistry… cyborg and… AI, we are
Upgrading …ourselves into… godlings – all it
Takes… will be just half a century …where science
Beats gods …and devils, saints and ghosts alike… at
Only …a fraction of no time, when a whim …pops up
For a human …to go back …to a wild animal, again
T. I. M. E.
T: the Egyptian loaf
far off the Phoenician mark
is still edible now
I: To begin with
The hieroglyphical origin of
My identity was simply no body
But a common reed
Bowing its head to the rising sun
On the barren bank of the Nile
Slim, tall, hollow-hearted
Standing against tropical heat
Until one day 'I' was used
As a human symbol, an open vowel
Referring to the speaker
And since then I have become
One of the most frequently spelt letters
In the linguistic order of the day
Always capitalized
To embody my dignity
Though I am nothing
But a common reed
That could have been made into a flute
M: despite your body
as imposing as a massive mountain
you have a mindset
hidden deeply
in the wisdom of a little owl
in the plasticities of a drop of water
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 so many 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...
The Past
More than enough has been recollected
About being in the past. It’s no time
To be, yet except for a handful few, many
Keep filling in the blanks of the present
With the leftovers of the past, or catching
The past from the present moment as if the present
Were a tail of a vanishing fish rather than
A rock from which the colt is running
To the rising sun. Indeed, the trouble with
The past is that it is deadly lost in the white pages
Of history. Plus, even if the past can be edited, but never
Be rewritten. So, let’s move to the future where
The wise men want us to, where the pasts cannot
Prevent us from surpassing the present
Time
[As the most frequently used noun in English today, is the word ‘time’ the right name for language to go right in the Confucian way?]
Which that begins all ends and ends all beginnings while progressing indefinitely within or without space.
Yes, that is time, time after time, time of the essence, time for celebration, time to pray, time to amend the constitution, time to talk about the future, time to lose, time for a change, time on her hands, time on your side, crunch time for dark matter hunt, long time no see, high time to go to bed, big time for a practical joker crossword, no time like the present, or good time to know Amondawa people living deep in the Amazonian rainforests of Brazil have no concept of time…
Bucket List
1. last year: find a short cut leading all humans to happiness;
2. last month: invent something allowing men to piss without spilling;
3. last week: travel to a foreign unpopulated mountainous area;
4. last day: climb onto the highest spot in a forest;
5. last hour: settle down under a tall and straight tree like a dying elephant;
6. last minute: look as far as possible at the landscape like Sphinx;
7. last second: release my inner being so that it can fly up;
8. last mini second: join the proto consciousness of the cosmos; and
9. the rest of time: drift around every quantum entangled with my other selves
Juan Changming published monographs on translation before leaving China. Currently, Yuan edits Poetry Pacific with Allen Qing Yuan in Vancouver. Credits include ten Pushcart nominations, eight chapbooks (most recent one being East Idioms [cyberwit.net, 2020]) & publications in Best of the Best Canadian Poetry (2008-17) & BestNewPoemsOnline, among 1639 others across 44 countries.
Lotus Image & License: Depositphotos_32738103_s-2015
Hesitantly, the snowflakes keep
Swinging around until their final fall
Swinging around until their final fall
To the ground, in thickening stillness
As the present becomes gradually
Assimilated to the past (or future?)
All in a wild white world of fairy tales
Beyond Time
It took hundreds… of thousands …of years
For …homo erectus to evolve …into sapiens
And longer …for chimpanzees to …erectus
But …engineering ourselves …by way of
Biochemistry… cyborg and… AI, we are
Upgrading …ourselves into… godlings – all it
Takes… will be just half a century …where science
Beats gods …and devils, saints and ghosts alike… at
Only …a fraction of no time, when a whim …pops up
For a human …to go back …to a wild animal, again
T. I. M. E.
T: the Egyptian loaf
far off the Phoenician mark
is still edible now
I: To begin with
The hieroglyphical origin of
My identity was simply no body
But a common reed
Bowing its head to the rising sun
On the barren bank of the Nile
Slim, tall, hollow-hearted
Standing against tropical heat
Until one day 'I' was used
As a human symbol, an open vowel
Referring to the speaker
And since then I have become
One of the most frequently spelt letters
In the linguistic order of the day
Always capitalized
To embody my dignity
Though I am nothing
But a common reed
That could have been made into a flute
M: despite your body
as imposing as a massive mountain
you have a mindset
hidden deeply
in the wisdom of a little owl
in the plasticities of a drop of water
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 so many 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...
The Past
More than enough has been recollected
About being in the past. It’s no time
To be, yet except for a handful few, many
Keep filling in the blanks of the present
With the leftovers of the past, or catching
The past from the present moment as if the present
Were a tail of a vanishing fish rather than
A rock from which the colt is running
To the rising sun. Indeed, the trouble with
The past is that it is deadly lost in the white pages
Of history. Plus, even if the past can be edited, but never
Be rewritten. So, let’s move to the future where
The wise men want us to, where the pasts cannot
Prevent us from surpassing the present
Time
[As the most frequently used noun in English today, is the word ‘time’ the right name for language to go right in the Confucian way?]
Which that begins all ends and ends all beginnings while progressing indefinitely within or without space.
Yes, that is time, time after time, time of the essence, time for celebration, time to pray, time to amend the constitution, time to talk about the future, time to lose, time for a change, time on her hands, time on your side, crunch time for dark matter hunt, long time no see, high time to go to bed, big time for a practical joker crossword, no time like the present, or good time to know Amondawa people living deep in the Amazonian rainforests of Brazil have no concept of time…
Bucket List
1. last year: find a short cut leading all humans to happiness;
2. last month: invent something allowing men to piss without spilling;
3. last week: travel to a foreign unpopulated mountainous area;
4. last day: climb onto the highest spot in a forest;
5. last hour: settle down under a tall and straight tree like a dying elephant;
6. last minute: look as far as possible at the landscape like Sphinx;
7. last second: release my inner being so that it can fly up;
8. last mini second: join the proto consciousness of the cosmos; and
9. the rest of time: drift around every quantum entangled with my other selves
Juan Changming published monographs on translation before leaving China. Currently, Yuan edits Poetry Pacific with Allen Qing Yuan in Vancouver. Credits include ten Pushcart nominations, eight chapbooks (most recent one being East Idioms [cyberwit.net, 2020]) & publications in Best of the Best Canadian Poetry (2008-17) & BestNewPoemsOnline, among 1639 others across 44 countries.
Lotus Image & License: Depositphotos_32738103_s-2015
