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Equanimity
Hold the sun firmly
Right above your inner landscape
And there will be no shadow
Shaking around
Let alone darkness
That may engulf your selfhood
Inside out
Unless it shakes itself with a wind
Like a young tree, at the noon time
Reflection
Pick up the mirror
Lost in your bog of consciousness
Cleans it really well
With your inner fingers
And you will see through
All faces and facets
Until you attain a clear vision
Of your original selfhood
Your entire universe
Plenum
The other day I was thinking about the
Immortality of God, Nature and Man’s
Artifact (like Buddha’s teachings, and
Newton’s discovery of gravity) when
I noticed another apple being eaten
By a lost child, the apple that was dropped
Onto the pavement from a broken bag
The one that was to inspire the eater’s
Playmate to eventually make a robot
Able to change the direction of our
Mother earth’s movement, and even
The way the human mind works, yes
The same old rotten apple that reminds of
The stinking corpse of a poor guy
Which led a prince to become Buddha
Once upon a long long time ago
A Rented Place Is No Home to Your Soul
Everyone has an innerself that actually needs
No housing, be it a well-located apartment
Or a luxurious mansion, for which you have
To toil and moil to pay off the mortgage
And constantly to paint, to furnish, or to
Renovate it as you would do for your outerself
But it does require you to design and construct
A dwelling somewhere or anywhere, on a treetop
Beside a streamlet, under a boulder, or beyond
The horizon, where you can ease your entire inner
Being into anything or nothing, where you can
Uplift your own spirit and your farthest relative
As if in a sociological quantum entanglement
Shortcut to Happiness
You never have to die
To go to heaven
Nor do you need to rely
On any religious rituals
All you should do
Is just to climb
Into the wicket of
An inner balloon; then
Light the burner
Drop off the ballast weights
One after another
As you rise, keep rising
Until you reach high
High into a time spot
Where you become the universe
And the universe becomes you
Self-Dating
Ever since you had to make money
At the cost of your health and
Character, you have always avoided
Looking at yourself in a mirror
Because you feel too ashamed
Too disgusted to meet yourself
Face to face again, where you could find
Neither comfort nor contentment
But ugliness bubbling in every
Cauldron-like cell of yours
Now for the first time I am gathering
All my courage to date my true self
As I say aloud to myself in the mirror
‘I love you,’ I see all kinds of ups
And downs zooming in my wrinkles, and
Cannot help crying like a re-found child
Do you remember the many pains and
Hardships you have gone through
With this face? Do you see through this face
The sacred secret of Greater Love?
Wind-Hater
You don’t know why you always
Hate the wind, but you can never forget
How all the topsoil was blown off
In the big bowl, how the passenger
Train derailed, the ship toppled
The cloud dispersed
The stream distorted
The petal broken
The rock weathered
The life dried
The whole country agitated
The conception aborted…
As you come to see it as nothing less
Than the evil spirit of disturbance
An invisible seasonal spectre
That keeps drifting around
Between heaven and hell
Hold the sun firmly
Right above your inner landscape
And there will be no shadow
Shaking around
Let alone darkness
That may engulf your selfhood
Inside out
Unless it shakes itself with a wind
Like a young tree, at the noon time
Reflection
Pick up the mirror
Lost in your bog of consciousness
Cleans it really well
With your inner fingers
And you will see through
All faces and facets
Until you attain a clear vision
Of your original selfhood
Your entire universe
Plenum
The other day I was thinking about the
Immortality of God, Nature and Man’s
Artifact (like Buddha’s teachings, and
Newton’s discovery of gravity) when
I noticed another apple being eaten
By a lost child, the apple that was dropped
Onto the pavement from a broken bag
The one that was to inspire the eater’s
Playmate to eventually make a robot
Able to change the direction of our
Mother earth’s movement, and even
The way the human mind works, yes
The same old rotten apple that reminds of
The stinking corpse of a poor guy
Which led a prince to become Buddha
Once upon a long long time ago
A Rented Place Is No Home to Your Soul
Everyone has an innerself that actually needs
No housing, be it a well-located apartment
Or a luxurious mansion, for which you have
To toil and moil to pay off the mortgage
And constantly to paint, to furnish, or to
Renovate it as you would do for your outerself
But it does require you to design and construct
A dwelling somewhere or anywhere, on a treetop
Beside a streamlet, under a boulder, or beyond
The horizon, where you can ease your entire inner
Being into anything or nothing, where you can
Uplift your own spirit and your farthest relative
As if in a sociological quantum entanglement
Shortcut to Happiness
You never have to die
To go to heaven
Nor do you need to rely
On any religious rituals
All you should do
Is just to climb
Into the wicket of
An inner balloon; then
Light the burner
Drop off the ballast weights
One after another
As you rise, keep rising
Until you reach high
High into a time spot
Where you become the universe
And the universe becomes you
Self-Dating
Ever since you had to make money
At the cost of your health and
Character, you have always avoided
Looking at yourself in a mirror
Because you feel too ashamed
Too disgusted to meet yourself
Face to face again, where you could find
Neither comfort nor contentment
But ugliness bubbling in every
Cauldron-like cell of yours
Now for the first time I am gathering
All my courage to date my true self
As I say aloud to myself in the mirror
‘I love you,’ I see all kinds of ups
And downs zooming in my wrinkles, and
Cannot help crying like a re-found child
Do you remember the many pains and
Hardships you have gone through
With this face? Do you see through this face
The sacred secret of Greater Love?
Wind-Hater
You don’t know why you always
Hate the wind, but you can never forget
How all the topsoil was blown off
In the big bowl, how the passenger
Train derailed, the ship toppled
The cloud dispersed
The stream distorted
The petal broken
The rock weathered
The life dried
The whole country agitated
The conception aborted…
As you come to see it as nothing less
Than the evil spirit of disturbance
An invisible seasonal spectre
That keeps drifting around
Between heaven and hell
Bio:
Yuan Changming edits Poetry Pacific with Allen Yuan. Credits include 15 chapbooks, 12 Pushcart nominations for poetry and 2 for fiction besides appearances in Best of the Best Canadian Poetry (2008-17), BestNewPoemsOnline and 2109 other publications across 51 countries. A poetry judge for Canada's 44th national magazine awards, Yuan began writing fiction in 2022; with his debut novel Detaching recently released at https://www.amazon.com/Detaching-Yuan-Changming/dp/B0DCNN474N, and his duology Mabakoola: Paradise Regained forthcoming in 2025.
-y at poetrypacific.blogspot.ca
