Beasts

      

By Changming Yuan

Strolling in the Fraser River Park             (Entrance Notice: Unleashed Dogs Welcome)   In this territory, every dog is free Though the leash is never too far behind In its owner’s hand   While the dogs make love Without even knowing each other’s names Their masters remain standing far apart Each fiercely guarding his pride and privacy     Without a dog, you will find yourself even less Than an animal, as your human rights Are blatantly violated by running dogs   None of them ever barks here though Either with humor or at any human But a wildly violent beast could go crazy And jump out of one of their chests At any moment To bite your head off All before you know it During their Dialogues   Behind the words they exchange Hides a wild snow-covered animal   It seems like a sleek but wounded panther Squatting under the thick bushes of syllables   Stop and listen with their cagey minds They can smell its bleeding sighs   But neither of them has seen its true face As it occasionally appears and disappears Snorting in the Sky   Flying between sea and sky Between day and night Amid heavenly or oceanic blue I lost all my references To any timed space Or a localized time Except the non-stop snorting Of a stranger neighbor   Then, beyond the snorts rising here And more looming there I see tigers, lions, leopards And other kinds of hanger-throated predators Darting out of every passenger’s heart Running amuck around us As if released from a huge cage As if in a dreamland Shark   i was using my little spear    you were using your mighty jaw             and prey was the prize of our pride   i missed mine, you missed yours but neither of us could stop             within the range of another range   like a satellite far beyond, far above                                     along its orbit Whale   deep from the heart of the sea your have been singing, singing aloud above and below the horizon   your voice reaches afar far beyond an entire continent though no human ear hears you   what are you singing about, whale? -- only another whale might catch a blue note travelling astray from your saline melody   in another universe   City Nightscape   for now, they have all stopped pretending to be more than chimpanzees struggling ferociously for power, sex, fame or money   lying seemingly still on each padded shelf  under the roof of hardened darkness is a bleeding devil tightly enclosed within a decent human shape, as if in a vast morgue   high above them is squatting a bloated serpent with a body of billion eyes all viciously open to watch for so many tiny dragons chasing and collecting the deformed soul trying desperately to escape form every fleshy casket Garments   we all wear garments made up of names, pasts, postures more or less, day and night whether on a huge spotlit stage or in a tiny dark lavatory even in our wildest dreams   we all have some sensitive parts to be covered by a human artifact fashionable or otherwise except when we take a shower or enjoy real sex   we all need to wrap up our true selves with layers of layers of civilization because we are simply too beastly if totally naked, even just for a moment Yuan Changming grew up in an isolated village, started to learn the English alphabet at age nineteen and published monographs on translation before leaving China.With a Canadian PhD in English, Yuan currently edits Poetry Pacific with Allen Yuan in Vancouver. Credits include eleven Pushcart nominations, nine chapbooks & awards, as well as publications in Best of the Best Canadian Poetry (2008-17),& BestNewPoemsOnline, among nearly 1,800 other, across 46 countries.     Lotus Image & License: Depositphotos_3273810