online today!FargoFan Poetry (118)

Biang biang noodles
in Xi'an, a discovery
to warm the heart when feet
tired from the day in Bing ma yong
had time for recovery.
Flat wide noodles and fiercely spicy.
Yellow dust made me long
For a shower to wash
both myself and my socks.
At this distance of years
with certainty I say
Biang biang rocks!

It's the same yellow dust
of the Yellow sea and Yellow river
that blows from the Gobi and Taklamakan
to Beijing, Seoul and Tokyo.
Just so you know
This 'poem' is rather
a 'jokey' oh!

How does a sheet dry
in the cold winter wind?
In Seoul I saw trees
Wrapped 'gainst the winter
And nothing green,
But in this movie
the raped grandma
hung out the washing
and grey-haired smiled.
A movie but nonetheless
Life as it is.

If I should want
to write to you again
though never had I stopped
what should I say
My lovely that I have not said before?
Now as a teacher let me try
to explain the tenses
Oh I cannot!

Our union on one hand
And yet it has never stilled our loving
When she intervened it alarmed us
both mightily, but since
no influence

Not the first time a child
Has trodden between
me and one I loved
Every time I walk past
the smooth grey eucalyptus
I think of her too

She who commanded by a son
to fore-swear a laowai,
with a grandchild looming,
acceded - well no court of appeal
and the word of the first son
with confucian weight carried.

Two loves, one lost one remote.

Should I ever tread there
In your room your place your house
Unbidden, and stand
Looking at you your garden
Your beans your basil
How will you greet me
Darling Grace?

Should I ever come
To take you oh
anywhere everywhere
will you stand and nod?
Please do, I need your yes
Don't think just come
My Darling Grace!

That snarling krinkled wrinkled man
at the foot of the escalator and stairs
stares at you daring you to ask
how it is he has no mask
blowing mightily and
tunelessly on his sousa
showing all the signs
of a life-time boozer
paltry money in the tray
shoulders hunched
and substantial paunch
this he's done for 20 years.
So a life goes for some.

I once had liked
Nay, loved her
I guess
But here I was deep in the pooh
For in the pot
Her remains were Stew!

My suburban centre
Small as it is
Has a strange ethnic imbalance
Here on the verge
of an outlying Chinatown:
Three Thai, one each of Nepalese, Indonesian.
Korean and Japanese shuttered now.
Two Chinese BBQ chickens selling nothing Chinese
Vietnamese bread
Vietnamese nails and feet
Asian hair-stylers two
and two Chinese greengrocers,
four Chinese 'zhongyi' or 'tuina' shops
plus two random goods shops one large one small.
A pub and a club and
Estate agents galore,
Miscellaneous shops that come and go.
Papered windows sad stories.

eating mandarins
that I have peeled
the mounds of people passed
we stumble over
I see as in a dream
Of being there
with you again in winter.
How I miss your voice!

Sitting in the waning sun on red brick fence
Awaiting take home pad thai
An aging BMW 3 series pulled up
And passenger alighted
It's engine burbled
as I might expect an eight to do
Yet clearly a six it was
So crossing the road to collect my noodles
I stooped and cocked an ear
The driver laughed and waved
But sniffing, as he drove off
'Running a little rich I think'

How I miss my big burbling V8
Written off in a rash rush of blood
By my ex!

watching the Korean movie tonight
in which they spoke German (yes really)
I recognised every word with a clarity
atonishing, it seemed, sixty years later.
french too to a somewhat lesser extent
but I cannot really assemble a sentence
the tongue is stilled but the comprehension alive.
apart from hamsa gamnida and anyeong gyeseo
no words of korean linger
yet I have lived neither in france nor germany.
what to make of that, not much!

And what to make of this?
Not much, a taunt.

A sliver moon
In this movie of Chernobyl
children in Cuba.
How rarely the moon in movies
Is not full
Yet there it was
Barely visible
And the rooster crow in the morning.
I recall from home as a child
From the Philippines with
the call of the bread seller
From a short time girl-friend years ago
And from the insane obsessive
Chongqing rooster who crowed all day.

And the fingernail moon.