Love Lost & Regained | I/我 as a Human | Lesson One in Chinese Characters
Directory of Destinies
Love Lost & Regained: 2 One-Sentence Poems for Qi Hong
1/ Love Lost: a Rambling Sentence
How I sometimes wonder
Whether it is because you wear
Your years so well or because the years
Wear you so well that I fell in mad love with
You after as long as 42 years of separation without
Knowing each other’s whereabouts, again at first sight
With the whole Pacific Ocean between our shortening arms
2/ Love Regained: a Periodic Sentence
At a fairyfly-like moment
On a bushy corner of nature
Preferably under a tall pine tree
In Mayuehe, our mecca or the hilly village
Adjacent closely to the bank of the Yangtze River
With myriad tongues from my hungry innermost being
Each eager to reach deep into your heart, where my soul’s
Fingers could caress every single synapse of your feminine feel
Between the warmth & tenderness of love, across the Pacific & the Pandemic
I’ll join you
I/我 as a Human: a Cross-Cultural Poem
1/ Denotations of I vs 我
The first person singular pronoun, or this very
Writing subject in English is I, an only-letter
Word, standing upright like a pole, always
Capitalized, but in Chinese, it is written with
Seven lucky strokes as 我, with at least 108
Variations, all of which can be the object case
At the same time.
Originally, it’s formed from
The character 找, meaning ‘pursuing’, with one
Stroke added on the top, which may well stand for
Anything you would like to have, such as money
Power, fame, sex, food, or nothing if you prove
Yourself to be a Buddhist practitioner inside out
2/ Connotations of Human & 人
Since I am a direct descendant of Homo Erectus, let me stand
Straight as a human/人, rather than kneel down like a slave
When two humans walk side by side, why to coerce
One into obeying the other as if fated to follow/从?
Since three humans can live together, do we really need
A boss, a ruler or a tyrant on top of us all as a group/众?
Given all the freedom I was born with, why, just
Why cage me within walls like a prisoner/囚？
Lesson One in Chinese Character/s:
a Bilinguacultural Poem about Heart
感：/gan/ perception takes place
when an ax breaks something on the heart
闷: /men/ depressed whenever your heart is
shut behind a door
忌：/ji/ jealousy implies
there being one’s self only in the heart
悲：/bei/ sorrow comes
from the negation of the heart
惑：/huo/ confusion occurs
when there are too many an ‘or’ over the heart
忠：/zhong/ loyalty remains
as long as the heart is kept right at the center
恥：/chi/ shame is the feel
you get when your ear conflicts with your heart
怒: /nu/ anger influxes when slavery
rises from above the heart
愁: /chou/ worry thickens as autumn
sits high on your heart
忍:/ren/ to tolerate is to bear a knife
straightly above your heart
忘: /wang/ forgetting happens
when there’s death on heart
意: /yi/ meaning is defined as
a sound over the heart
思: /si/ thought takes place
within the field of heart
恩: /en/ kindness is
a reliance on the heart
Directory of Destinies: a Wuxing Poem
– Science or superstition, the ancient theory of the Five Elements accounts for us all.
1 Metal (born in a year ending in 0 or 1)
-helps water but hinders wood; helped by earth but hindered by fire
he used to be totally dull-colored
because he came from the earth’s inside
now he has become a super-conductor
for cold words, hot pictures and light itself
all being transmitted through his throat
2 Water (born in a year ending in 2 or 3)
-helps wood but hinders fire; helped by metal but hindered by earth
with her transparent tenderness
coded with colorless violence
she is always ready to support
or sink the powerful boat
sailing south
3 Wood (born in a year ending 4 or 5)
-helps fire but hinders earth; helped by water but hindered by metal
rings in rings have been opened or broken
like echoes that roll from home to home
each containing fragments of green
trying to tell their tales
from the forest’s depths
4 Fire (born in a year ending 6 or 7)
-helps earth but hinders metal; helped by wood but hindered by water
your soft power bursting from your ribcage
as enthusiastic as a phoenix is supposed to be
when you fly your lipless kisses
you reach out your hearts
until they are all broken
5 Earth (born in a year ending in 8 or 9)
-helps metal but hinders water; helped by fire but hindered by wood
i think not; therefore, I am not
what I am, but I have a color
the skin my heart wears inside out
tattooed intricately
with footprints of history
Yuan Changming edits Poetry Pacific with Allen Yuan in Vancouver. Credits include 12 Pushcart nominations & 15 chapbooks, most recently Sinosaure (Redhawk Publications). Besides appearances in Best of the Best Canadian Poetry (2008-17), BestNewPoemsOnline, Poetry Daily and nearly 2,000 other literary outlets worldwide, Yuan served on the poetry jury for Canada’s 2021 National Magazine Awards and began writing and publishing fiction in 2022.