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Midsummer Night
With my third eye, I often see
The stars glistening like pearls
Deeply lost in the sea of skies
Skylight at Midnight
Not really the rain
Tapping it aloud
Like sparrows’ beaks
But all the stars
From the outer space
Splashing down
Into a Bai Juyi’s
Plate for the dancing
Pearls that I am
Trying hard to catch
And embed within
This foreign stanza
Zenning at Night
In the depth of darkness
Sit straight
In the full lotus position
With your palms facing upwards
& you will receive
Not only photons from beyond
The Milk Way
But messages coded
With human love, turning your whole being
Into a Buddha in Samadhi
While all lost
Souls keep fluttering around like tree leaves
Tender in Between: for Qi Hong
As night
Falls
Can day
Catch it
From the other
Side of
This world?
Meanwhile
The broken heart
Is being
Caressed by
All the fingers
Of starlight
As tender as
Illuminating
When? In the Starry Night? Did My Life Started?
The instant? an infinitesimal sperm from my father?
Penetrated into my mother’s egg? on a dark ? night
The second? my little head ? was pushed and pulled
Right? Out of my mother’s teenager? womb?
Or the minute? I hit a brick? broke my forehead
And thus got my first scar? (memory?)
With? no awareness of any earlier? childhood
When? or where? did my life? begin in the red centre?
On the Stage: After Shakespeare
Yesterday, yesterday, and yester-
Day has gone with the west wind
One after another to the starry night
Set tight against history; each
Present moment is blatantly spot-
Lightning the deformed soul
Down, down the heavy curtain!
Death is a zombie starkly zooming
In the back ground of every heart:
We each believe our selves to be
The hero on our own stage
Though we turn out no more than
An extra happening to appear
By mistake in a stranger’s comedy
Who I Am: a Biocomic-Philosophical Poem
Looking up to
The darkish infinity of
The outer space, I see
How a little star has been growing
Only to die, in (holographic) parallel
With a cell within my nightly body
& come to know my protobeing
& the cosmos as one
& the same: just as I is
The cosmos, so
The cosmos am I
Their Starless Nights
Beyond her insomnia, a familiar
Face was looming in their study
Have nothing better to do, he reasoned
Sipping from a tall glass
While a lost dog was stalking around
The house, sniffing at a meowing shadow
& pissing every once in a while
To mark its inner dog-matic territory
Whose dog? Was it really a dog? How
Come she felt it sneaking like a cat
Its tongue was so long
Long enough to reach her own heart
Or the heart of his glass, even longer
Than to keep away the devilish virus
Yuan Changming grew up in an isolated village, started to learn the English alphabet in Shanghai at age 19 and published monoragpohs on translation before leaving China. With a Canadian PhD in English, Yuan edits Poetry Pacific with Allen Yuan in Vancouver. Credits include 12 Pushcart nominations for poetry and 2 for fiction as well as 16 chapbooks and appearances in Best of the Best Canadian Poetry (2008-17), among 2,019 others across 49 countries. A poetry judge for Canada's 44th National Magazine Awards, Yuan began to write and publish fiction in 2022, with his first (hybrid) novel Bamakoola: Paradise Regained forthcoming in 2025.
With my third eye, I often see
The stars glistening like pearls
Deeply lost in the sea of skies
Skylight at Midnight
Not really the rain
Tapping it aloud
Like sparrows’ beaks
But all the stars
From the outer space
Splashing down
Into a Bai Juyi’s
Plate for the dancing
Pearls that I am
Trying hard to catch
And embed within
This foreign stanza
Zenning at Night
In the depth of darkness
Sit straight
In the full lotus position
With your palms facing upwards
& you will receive
Not only photons from beyond
The Milk Way
But messages coded
With human love, turning your whole being
Into a Buddha in Samadhi
While all lost
Souls keep fluttering around like tree leaves
Tender in Between: for Qi Hong
As night
Falls
Can day
Catch it
From the other
Side of
This world?
Meanwhile
The broken heart
Is being
Caressed by
All the fingers
Of starlight
As tender as
Illuminating
When? In the Starry Night? Did My Life Started?
The instant? an infinitesimal sperm from my father?
Penetrated into my mother’s egg? on a dark ? night
The second? my little head ? was pushed and pulled
Right? Out of my mother’s teenager? womb?
Or the minute? I hit a brick? broke my forehead
And thus got my first scar? (memory?)
With? no awareness of any earlier? childhood
When? or where? did my life? begin in the red centre?
On the Stage: After Shakespeare
Yesterday, yesterday, and yester-
Day has gone with the west wind
One after another to the starry night
Set tight against history; each
Present moment is blatantly spot-
Lightning the deformed soul
Down, down the heavy curtain!
Death is a zombie starkly zooming
In the back ground of every heart:
We each believe our selves to be
The hero on our own stage
Though we turn out no more than
An extra happening to appear
By mistake in a stranger’s comedy
Who I Am: a Biocomic-Philosophical Poem
Looking up to
The darkish infinity of
The outer space, I see
How a little star has been growing
Only to die, in (holographic) parallel
With a cell within my nightly body
& come to know my protobeing
& the cosmos as one
& the same: just as I is
The cosmos, so
The cosmos am I
Their Starless Nights
Beyond her insomnia, a familiar
Face was looming in their study
Have nothing better to do, he reasoned
Sipping from a tall glass
While a lost dog was stalking around
The house, sniffing at a meowing shadow
& pissing every once in a while
To mark its inner dog-matic territory
Whose dog? Was it really a dog? How
Come she felt it sneaking like a cat
Its tongue was so long
Long enough to reach her own heart
Or the heart of his glass, even longer
Than to keep away the devilish virus
Yuan Changming grew up in an isolated village, started to learn the English alphabet in Shanghai at age 19 and published monoragpohs on translation before leaving China. With a Canadian PhD in English, Yuan edits Poetry Pacific with Allen Yuan in Vancouver. Credits include 12 Pushcart nominations for poetry and 2 for fiction as well as 16 chapbooks and appearances in Best of the Best Canadian Poetry (2008-17), among 2,019 others across 49 countries. A poetry judge for Canada's 44th National Magazine Awards, Yuan began to write and publish fiction in 2022, with his first (hybrid) novel Bamakoola: Paradise Regained forthcoming in 2025.
