Seeing The Year Out by Su Tung-po, translated by Burton Watson

Want to know what the passing year is like?
A snake slithering down a hole.
Half his long scales already hidden,
how to stop him from getting away?
Grab his tail and pull, you say?
Pull all you like - it does no good.
The children try hard not to doze,
chatter back and forth to stay awake,
but I say let dawn cocks keep still!
I fear the noise of watch drums pounding.
We've sat so long the lamp's burned out.
I get up and look at the slanting Dipper.
How could I hope next year won't come?
My mind shrinks from the failures it may bring.
I work to hold on to the night
while I can still brag I'm young.

just a duck in the christmas shooting gallery

tired. depleted. crushed. whelmed over. searching for synonyms of rout (a disorderly retreat of defeated troops. thanks!) nauseous morning with a terrible migraine. the newer cashier flaunted her ignorance, as if trying to impress with the sheer quantity of questions. rebuilding immaculate castles of books, again & again with each oblivious jacketed wave. if only my hands could absorb their content. people keep walking behind me to ask my back for help, which sends me to the bathroom to check my face. what's that carnival game, where they shoot the placid ducks floating back & forth? fled for lunch to the handmade asian noodle cart run by a husband & wife, the husband leaning out the window, eating a skinned apple. he made eye contact, bowed slightly, and smiled when i approached. i ordered my usual tofu veggie noodles and he got started cooking while his wife, who was sitting on a stool in the back gulping down noodles, got up to take the money. she made eye contact, bowed slightly, and smiled thank you. every time i go there i feel humbled by their sincerity. they genuinely appreciate that i keep coming back, and the honesty of that appreciation makes me feel human again. after lunch, i try & fail to shovel my way out of an avalanche of transactions, mind so mush by the end i am nearly giving away money. i survive & scurry away to the math section to lick my damaged equations. i step out the door at five completely frazzled, staring incoherently up at the pearl's neon towers, unsure if i can handle grocery shopping. a coworker jerks me from my reverie with a departing farewell, strolling past arm-in-arm with another coworker. dating now, i think. dating again, actually, which would explain the recent chilliness, hmm. i brave wholepaycheck for groceries, miss the bus, and decide to walk instead. i look up at the neon again after resigning myself to the long walk and misread a sign in a window that does not say:

OFTEN.

we keep ourselves available to be taken away from everything

i had a pleasant encounter with a homeless man today while waiting for my lunch at a food cart. it's seems like many people try to ignore them and i feel that temptation myself, for various reasons, such as when i'm in a hurry or feeling stressed, but sometimes i feel a resistance to their presence, a desire to push them away, as if i couldn't bear admitting them. i've been working with noticing that feeling of revulsion and relaxing when it arises, softening toward instead of hardening against. i want to say the man i interacted with on the sidewalk was middle-aged but age can be difficult to guess with someone who is surviving on the street, enduring whatever that hell is for them. i think taking pictures as i walk around has encouraged me to be more present in my environment, alert to the possibility of arrested by something beautiful. people downtown tend to be somewhere other than where they are, whisking their bodies down the street to catch up with where they plan to be. how strange that the people we shun & call homeless are actually the one's most rooted in their environment. the interaction itself wasn't really a big deal, just some dirty, disheveled guy making his rounds, asking the people waiting at the food carts for spare change. i know what it's like to be shunned, to not be admitted. when i look through my notebooks i notice how frequently i refer to eyes & use words that describe various forms of looking. it's embarrassing to see what i so obviously crave. a friend of mine once told me that when she was a little girl her parents said that she constantly asked people, "do you believe me?" she's a very sensitive person, not unlike me, and she thinks that she sensed at an early age the incongruity between what she saw in people's eyes and what she heard & felt. that really resonated, but i think for me, what i am looking for is the person who is there within the person who is not there. i told the homeless guy, "sorry, i can't help you." and i really feel that. i don't know what the hell i can do to help these people. so i give them the one thing they can't use to poison their minds or numb their pain. i give them what i in fact long for, search for, and frequently lack. i look in their eyes when i speak to them. i feel ridiculous typing this, like wow, that's very jesus of you! and yet, he met my gaze and thanked me. i guess i gave what i didn't know i could spare.

friend zone blues

sentenced to nothing ever ending

finger-dangling off a downtown high rise 

gasping at what's reflected back as i 
endure on hold again

scrolling through keypad labyrinths,

those xeroxed voices did not console 

my warm saran wrapped heart 
with their perfectly enunciated, mail flat requests to

"press nine for more options..."

playing pin the name on the new face

every waking day i am   

up to dark, asleep to dark 

teased by a sun i can never see, 
blinded by a neon eclipse,

lost like a stranger in the dusty stacks 

of a faded, illegible theology that 
always fails at the big reveal-

cold spooning in the spooky  

parking lot of platonic friendship

i am too undressed for all this 
appropriate behavior in public 
never kissing and always too hungry 
for the meal i am served no wet heat 
drama under fluffy foreign blankets 

always waving but never touching 
those clean island bodies fattening on 
inscrutably long lists of 

unpronounceable substitutes 
for love

in honor of a poet's passing: Ahmed Fouad Negm

http://www.jocr8.com/portfolio/tasteofdesign

Let it be known by all
that prisons are only walls,
that ideas are like light,
that light can jump over a thousand walls,
And that walls never hold back the spirit. 
And let it be known by all
that injustice has grown old,
that the gates of the prison are weak,
that the handles of the gates have disappeared,
And that soon all this will just be memories,
And that these promises will be fulfilled tomorrow,
And that all your days, and ours, will be filled with light.





http://www.perssupport.nl/apssite/binaries/content/assets/persberichten/2013/12/09/PCF_poembook_Ahmed+Fouad+Negm_2DEC13pdf