It is the autumn of my 7th grade at school. The first year at Frick Junior High.
The school is large and dirty and very impersonal. Perhaps it is the first year of my life that feelings seem to have any importance. I think I am lost, lost in a large world of uncaring people. It is as if I turned around and found myself in something I couldn’t understand and most of all didn’t want to understand.
I wonder what am I doing here and why? Why am I sentenced to this setting. Last year I didn’t seem to feel much of anything. I was a child that was taken care of and I want to go back, but I know I can’t. Now I’m something that is not a child, but what am I?
We’re told to go to period 1, that is P.E., so I go. The teacher always looks so strange. Her legs are thick and bulky and she wears short socks and heavy white shoes. Her face is like stone, no emotion, she acts like something of a man and woman combined. I am scared. We dress in a cold room, it is always cold in that room. We dress in queer looking blue shorts with elastic in the legs and snaps on the side. The shirt is blue all blue with snaps in the front. Everybody looks alike, we are now going to play tetherball, and we do. Then the loud whistle brows, it blows in my ear and I can hear the ringing for the next ten minutes. The game is finally over, nobody seems to know who won or lost and nobody cares.
Next we shower in dirty stalls and hear laughing, giggling and yelling. My hair is a mess and the day has just began. I wonder will I get through Period 2.
O Habibitiy
I am shaking as a leafless branch
Your presence is a tremendous price of rebellion,
Would tonight's rain over my unnoticed heartache?
With a drop of your kindness water, my thirst demise it.
A restrained lover is in a dream of a magnificent casket
I tried to resist winter's sun until I inferred your warm voice
The world's end is real, however, we still seek for the ark
Baghdad reveals the hanging corpses to illustrate my grief.
O habibitiy, true satisfaction can only happen once a year,
Our tongues are silent from the words of compassion
Love me with an earthy heart, and inky honey on the lips.
Montreal is the city that opens my eyes to fall in love with you.
Without any golden treasure, you love me with my sweats.
Without any colourful dreams, you love me with my bursts.
Without any valuable trophies, you adore me with my soul.
With some poems I wrote for you, I see that you are my habibility.
O habibitiy means my beloved in Arabic.
01/17/2022
Language of a Cursed Struggle
After I was evacuated from destiny’s festivity “womb”
I concede that I have to focus on improving myself
from the world's major challenges of living sufficiently.
I spread kindness among others
I serve as a good citizen of this earth
I fall in love with severe depression cluelessly.
Little stones are in my direction to walk barefoot to cure
My awareness’s become the language of a cursed struggle
I keep my decent smile in an intimate locker, swallow its keys.
Difficult times are pursuing the lightning I seek for
I serve in-between seasons on a daily battle basis
Sitting on the chair, learning to apologize for the dark sky.
Allow me to enter into your heart, and listen intently
Truthfully, I am here to relate my pain and connect with you
Take me to the calm shore, I will heal you with a wavey love.
Buried Treasure
Our devotion should not be
buried as forgotten treasure
Night abandons my torn’s past
like an empty pack of cigarettes.
The moonlight sets our dreamy sails,
as the seagulls and sea sing along
to our shoreline love.
With eyes confiding to our mouths.
We expand our love on
the spring treetops,
Rays of the summer sun
breath of your creek.
Fly me away from the bars
Let my fantasy glow with the stars
I truly love and miss you for so long
Yet, your perfume whispers a sad song.
01/15/2022
Steps To Be Orphan…
The sky is blue,
but her heart is in the severe blues.
She lives in a world of brutal humiliation
and continuous barbarity.
Your daybreak is colourful and cloudy
Her daylight is black and darker than your grief
Your dreams are the corners of the world
As for her, her dreams were crushed from her
-sleeping upon a bed of rock.
Your parents teach you how those birds fly
While the guy who raped her destroyed her revolution
As she realized that life unfairness taught her
steps to be orphan, with chains invisible on her coffin.
The four seasons of the year were her friends,
The summer sunrise whispers to her ears some of prayers
The autumn pour warm above her salty face of her crying out
The snow hides her wounds from society nonstop judgments
The spring offers her the scent she deserves to be the queen of the world.
She doesn't have a cellphone
or unreal images on social media.
Her eyes filmed what the world censor from us,
She was the seen and read stories of homelessness.
Unfortunately, her sufferings grow into a dark cloud
It grows faster than the days of your days of joblessness
With more flames of her tears burning the cages of birds
Those birds flow to heaven, while she is crossing barefoot
to the bonfire and cigarettes of another unscared rapist...
Four Poems
Written by Chinese Poet Yuan Hongri
Translated by Yuanbing Zhang
God is Ourselves after Waking up
You can’t catch every worldly thing like you can’t retain the days.
You can’t see the truth of all things on earth like you can’t see your own soul.
Happiness and tribulation may not exist as if there is no night
and daylight in the Kingdom of Heaven,
And the universe is merely the phantom of the light of our soul,
and God is ourselves after waking up.
上帝是梦醒之后的自己
你抓不住世间的一切犹如留不住时光
你看不见万物的真相犹如看不见自己的灵魂
幸福和苦难也许并不存在犹如在天国没有黑夜与白昼
而宇宙只是自己的灵魂之光的幻影而上帝是梦醒之后的自己
City of Dreamland
You walk in the city of dreamland but forget that you are the unique creator.
For your soul is the unique God that lives in the Kingdom of Heaven;
And you believe the riot of colours in a dream–
the pulsating of life and the blight of death;
And the muse of love makes you look like butterfly that hovered lightly in the garden
and forgot that your name is Zhuangzi.
梦境之城
你走在梦境之城却忘了自己是唯一的创造者
而灵魂是唯一的上帝而且居住于不可回忆之天国
而你相信了梦中的赤橙兰绿那生之绚烂与死之枯萎
而爱情之蜜酒让你如同花园里翩跹飞舞的蝴蝶而忘了自己名曰庄子
Universe is the Heavenly Garden of The Stars
Emptiness-nothingness will save you and wipe away all of the worldly scars,
Until you are fresh as the beginning and as fragrant – beauty as another spring.
The world will never fade because the universe is the heavenly garden of the stars.
The other you is that giant who is arriving in a huge spaceship
from another city of the sun.
宇宙是天国的星辰花园
空无会拯救你且抹去世上的一切伤痕
直到你鲜艳如初芳美若又一个春日甘醇之大明烝烝
世界永不会凋谢因为宇宙是天国的星辰花园
明天的你那乘坐星际巨舰的巨人正在另一个太阳之城驶来
King of the Universe
Seek thyself and seek your soul which is a lifetime mission.
The soul is both in your body and the Kingdom of Heaven,
Because the eyes always deceive you, thus you are lost in the illusion of the world.
You will be the king of the universe when you find yourself or else you have nothing.
宇宙之王
寻找自己寻找自己的灵魂这是终生的使命
灵魂在你的体内也在遥远的天国
因为眼晴总在把你欺骗而让你迷失于世界的幻象
当你找到了自己甚至一无所有也将成为宇宙之王
Yuan Hongri (born 1962) is a renowned Chinese mystic, poet, and philosopher. His work has been published in the UK, USA, India, New Zealand, Canada, and Nigeria; his poems have appeared in Poet's Espresso Review, Orbis, Tipton Poetry Journal, Harbinger Asylum, The Stray Branch, Pinyon Review, Taj Mahal Review, Madswirl, Shot Glass Journal, Amethyst Review, The Poetry Village, and other e-zines, anthologies, and journals. His best known works are Platinum City and Golden Giant. His works explore themes of prehistoric and future civilization.
Yuanbing Zhang (b. 1974), is Mr. Yuan Hongri’s assistant and translator. He himself is a Chinese poet and translator, and works in a Middle School, Yanzhou District, Jining City, Shandong Province China. He can be contacted through his email-3112362909@qq.com.
Email:3112362909@qq.com Hongri Yuan Phone:+86 15263747339
Address:No.18 middle school Yanzhou District ,Jining City, Shandong Province, China
Grow Up (Say It To The Mirror Remix)
Look at you wearing ocd like it's a badge of honor
Is that your latest excuse to get through life
What people are supposed to feel sorry for you and give you a break.
You know better than that by now you should realize that you
Will never amount to anything unless you make a lot of changes really fast
Out here bragging about being a criminal with your silly ass
You'll never get any bigger in the world you want because you're really trash
And not as good as you think you are
Writing all this crazy love poetry about a woman you've never met
Yeah you two had a special bond despite the distance
But instead of losing your mind over a woman
You need to sit it out have some alone time
Try to fix yourself because in your current shape
You wouldn't do anything but bring a woman down
Of course you would love them with a passion they've probably never seen before
But what about all those other sides of you that you could show them
With every single heart you can't settle for anything less than a tragedy
Such a drama king you look on the bright side and turn your nose up
What are you 41...well I'm here to tell you that you still need to grow up
Not good with the shears and snips you lay out of work
And sacrifice the money to run from the problem
So you gonna let em fire you for laying out or you gonna get every dollar possible
And make em fire you for fucking up some plants
Again you've got a lot of growing up to do
I know you don't like hearing that but I'm gonna keep saying it till you can't stand it
Till you stop and say to yourself...you know what he's right
I have a lot of growing up to do
You can't hide in your fictional worlds anymore
You just made it to the pan you never even flashed
I know this hurts but someone had to tell you
One more thing and I really didn't want to go this far
But while you're out here chasing women
Why don't you sit it out and try to fix your relationship with your children
Yeah I know that one hurt and again someone has an awful lot of growing up to do
Hate to be so tough on you...you just look like a fool the way you carry yourself
I wanna see you do better in life so you can hold your head up proudly
Best take all these words to heart
What breaks it in a different way might save you...
The Gallery Group
I feel like I’m in the “Gallery Group,”
ex-officio; for those who don’t know,
the participants are Democrats who
shared the January 6th experience
secreted in the space for the public
and the press to observe
the proceedings of Congress.
Surrounded by marble relief
sculptures, the likes of
Hammurabi, Suleiman,
Simon de Montfort, Napoleon,
visages in this place
identifying that begun
long before the founding fathers,
these men and women, white,
black, and brown, enduring a
nightmare in daylight
while the mob marauded.
For an hour of horror
before the hallway
cleared by Capitol Police
allowing an escape,
a former Army Ranger,
a Marine who fought
in Iraq, a prior UNICEF
employee, a previous
CIA operations officer,
one who had been a labor organizer
whose immigrant father was
a farm worker and immigrant
mother, a nursing home laundress,
U.S. Representatives all, they spent
this time of terror hunkered down,
pleading in prayer that went viral,
afraid of what would become of
them and America. I feel much
the same, one year after.
A member of the Gallery
Group happened to be
carrying a scarf that day,
bearing the Returns of Qualified
Voters and Reconstruction Oath
of her great-great-great-grandfather
granting him the right to vote after being
freed from slavery. He could not write
his name, so he signed with an ‘X.’
Afterword—Lisa Blunt Rochester, U.S. Representative from Delaware in remarks made in Congress to commemorate January 6th recalls her great-great-great-grandfather, a freed slave and those who came before her: “I have continued to hope even when I feel hopeless – my ancestors wouldn’t have it any other way...”
News source: “Trauma in House gallery bonds members of Congress even a year later”
Howard Richard Debs is a recipient of the 2015 Anna Davidson Rosenberg Poetry Awards. His essays, fiction, and poetry appear internationally in numerous publications. His book Gallery: A Collection of Pictures and Words (Scarlet Leaf Publishing), is the recipient of a 2017 Best Book Award and 2018 Book Excellence Award. His book Political (Cyberwit Press) is the 2021 American Writing Awards winner in poetry. He is co-editor of New Voices: Contemporary Writers Confronting the Holocaust, forthcoming from Vallentine Mitchell of London, publisher of the first English language edition of Anne Frank's diary. He is listed in the Poets & Writers Directory.
In This Foggy Unclear Morning
In this foggy unclear morning
All seem to be hazy and smoggy
The world's covered with the white sheet
It is as it were the moon hid in one corner
And the sun tries to peep through the other
A play between light and shade
Through which we, the two loving doves
Spread the wings for the longing site
How sweet the kingfisher falling on a fish on the river
Breaks the silence of the world around
Perhaps always breaks the silence over time
How sweet the swans making love on the bank of the river!
Falling on each other in every way they need to be
In this cold winter morning I feel my warmth into the arms, O dear
On the soft touch in between us
The sun rises within enlightening the body of the earth
Every loving hand getting close together
The eyes so deep and clear
Disperse the fog as the day advances.
Chapainawabganj, Bangladesh
21/12//2020
The New Sun
Who is sawing my heart like the woods up into logs?
The sound of cutting the musical stream
The rhythmic waves of the ocean
As goes on from the beginning
The endless journey of this water
How can you describe it in the theory of revolution?
The ever chopping sound of the woods muses the present
Striking on the strings of the past
The eyes fixed on to the light
The waves falling on
The saw cutting on
The lifelong process both in water and land
Flowing on the wings of eons always evolves the luster of the new sun.
Chapainawabganj, Bangladesh
22/12//2020
The Death Bed
The cot made for carrying the dead body
How glistening in the light of the sun!
Just at the walking side on my way to home
My sweet home; my dears, caresses and loving tears
The bed placed on for anyone to the unknown
The love-bed, the dreamy gardens
How happy I pass my days on the ground!
This gigantic tower, the brand new materials all the year round
Our little sweet babies crying for any little sweet insistence
Forgetting all I am taken to this bed
Lying there in peace under the shady large tree
Deep in sleep
The birds and deer unveil the curtain of my eyes.
Chapainawabganj, Bangladesh
23/12//2020
Every Day and Night
A night burned in turn the light of the day seems obscure
A day's tyranny breaks the rib bone of the silent peaceful sleep at night
The face is as it were hundred years old dilapidated home
The role we play for every day and night
What an effulgence of the sun, the cascading wave of the moon!
We are all with the petals, leaves and roots getting altogether
Flowing on the river of day and night
Feel that pain or joy in tune.
Chapainawabganj, Bangladesh
25/12//2020
The Fragrance of Jasmine
You are my fragrance of jasmine in the moonlit night
I rush to you forever charmed in love
To the flower, to the shade
To the unknown musical rhythm
My heart beats with the pea-cock dance
Yet, why does the flower hide-away?
Why does the moon get lost in the cloud?
Water rolling into the well of my eyes
In this lifeless dark room fighting the fire
Back to my own I come over
O my jasmine, my moon
Won't my sky be filled with the shade and affection?
Laughing loud I take my breath so quicker
The sky reflects with new form of jasmine light.
Chapainawabganj, Bangladesh
25/12//2020
City as replica
subjective stabilization
mirrors archeology
an ecosystem in the fur
and stomach a hypothesis
non-narrative pavements
resurface as ghostly blueprints
coordination scaled down to trivial
tho delineations never existed
zero marks the obelisks imagined
featured integrated hung from subfloor.
The green ruins aesthetically pleasing
Using materials anachronistic
though talking pyramidal shape
in various contexts risks
and a permanent fixture conflicts
but reflects priorities damp and cool
proved fertile yet theoretical
like fauna inhabiting buildings.
Ranging dope fence beard
Flicker vacuum punch
this bowl
shifts released
fighting stomp
differed a mile.
Shrimp
coat of arms
best vest
inflicted mania
dirt
no sense.
Open strategies
dispossessed as past
in particular
subtleties
meditate
variegated
horizons
centers produce
rural forging
finding effective
authorized
passages an ever-
receding relevance
formal alien fast
dissolves pre-
history.
materials size device astronomers
snivel less an art
aforementioned encore avenue
city sweeps certain roast
covered in juice
squeeze portrait
grasshopper brow
eye gauges sneeze guard
once membrane vest
cloth
broth
sauce
gangly grizzly grimace
buzzword picked
to bits
drowned
soap dish
coming from wheat engineer
tools for transportation flicker
lighter fluid scrapbook promenade
weapons civil
as a planned computation
against ascertained scope
