American Dreams

In the sadness of afternoon, shadows of former happiness lengthening, sounds of other lives muted, lone tyre howl receding, future appalling, I recall my past.  I read curved across carpet like a cat, aggravating my father, a boy lost in American struggle from afar; Steinbeck, Dos Passos, Sinclair Lewis.  On Friday nights I sat engrossed, face ghost-lit, sometimes watching cinematic adaptations of those books.

During a barren fog of factory hours in my excited teenaged loneliness, my yearning a storm to go somewhere, go there, a chaotic jumble of imagery merges with books and movies.  A moody John Cassavetes type, I prowl the clangour of a poverty-shrouded waterfront area, sling my hook with longshoremen, argue with an emphatic unshaven priest who demands a beer, and workers’ rights.

World now moved on to these tragic times, light fades as if weary, reflects from familiar surfaces; the great dumb fridge, TV’s blank screen.  I drift back again, seize my chance in neon-festooned Vegas, run numbers, survive on actors’ charm, bounce along Atlantic City’s boardwalk, Lucky between lips, ready to rebel, stumblingly articulate like James Dean’s shooting star, high on hope, adventure, revelling in American grunge glamour.

In my refuge’s silent splintering memory doubles as medication.  This plague spins its web, trapping world travellers.  Remember jetlag?  Narratives of life and death disappear faster than turned pages.  Among my cramped comforts screens much smaller than those of youth’s captivation occasionally transport me in isolation to a better time when I flew across a broad ocean, then a continent, heaved my heavy backpack into the Newark night.  Veni vidi.

                                                                      ****************

Ian C Smith, Australia <icsmithpoet@gmail.com>

Magnetic  Horizon

Watching yachts, tinnies, round Old Man’s Head in this thrum of wind ruffling the feathers of patrolling sandpipers, he considers the choice of a single word to describe the way gulls flicker across sifted cloudlight blanketing Bass Strait.  Each summer he dwells there like a gipsy, staying wherever he can overlook this cove.

Barefoot, sunburnt in the lamplight by the beach of an island in a primal sea, they played rummy, two packs, jokers wild, a rum recipe of clan rules.  Nobody could decently shuffle such a knackered elastic-banded deck.  The father, off the grog, going around in circles, dealt, cards flying, acolytes alert for arcane witticisms.

Here, in the lee of the roaring forties, sand engulfs the ribs of an old wreck.  Children have built a Lord of the Rings realm, a stark beachscape weathering tides, reminding him of sojourns when his children sculpted sunlit sand, when, like most, he was unable to foretell the haunted whispering of his blind spots.

Sensing glory, one might reach for the discard pile, taking a chance on a bait-stained handful, only to be stunned by the winner going out with a whoop.  Caught with your pants down, was their chortle.  A king of spades, beard curling, looked sad for a family man on holiday.  If he used that sword on some hapless subject it was for the common good.

Where the sea furls, muscular young men run.  He would wind this vision down to slow-motion like the opening scene of glorious athletic youth in Chariots of Fire.  How can they be his sons from long ago?  Yet their names are the same, the blond manes, their self-conscious shouts, a narrative nothing like his own best-forgotten youth.  They plunge into foam, a weight shifting in his heart.

A queen of hearts resembled Anne Boleyn on the way to her own execution clutching a posy of forget-me-nots, wondering what happened to romance.  Two jokers idled on crescent moons peering down through binoculars, prankster gods bemused by in-house catchphrases, deft mental arithmetic, the way the suits always ended up together.

Near a pioneer’s grave silent women from the yoga retreat exchange smiles with him as a pair of sea eagles circle the tinted sky.  He catalogues his picaresque past, wonders about absolution, if he is a recurring antic dream to his sons, silence ringing like the cessation of a tolled bell, marking seasons that all too quickly fell.   

****** 

Traversing Afar

Shucking the duvet on runny-nosed mornings that winter, the view from my attic window was often of frosted fields. Instead of slouching off to work in those pre-computerised days I filled pages with biro ink.  Adlestrop station nestled nearby, unknown to me, as was Edward Thomas’s aching poem evoking a past all changed.  Wind-borne rain ruffled rooks in tall elms sheltering horses, rattled that window of what I fancied a garret atop the mansion where I attracted the law, ineptly triggering the burglar alarm several times scrubbing six bathrooms for my rent, to the cops’ smirking annoyance.  A gas heater on castors like a metallic seeing-eye dog companion-cum desk collecting an Olympian pattern of coffee rings, completed my joy of faux hardship, days I once did, the rest memory.

In Lower Oddington’s Norman church I stood, silent before the pale colours of medieval paintings, imagination brimming with people’s fate.  In that sanctum’s musty mortar odour I thought of hope’s constant struggle, the word Beloved mind-echoing.  Born in Twickenham, Australian-raised, I remembered Sunday school, hassock dust smell, knees hurting, apostles of stained glass pitying poor sinners, our quivering vicar praying for salvation.  Now in Gloucestershire, befriended by a local woman who exercised hunters for a pittance, I accepted her invitation to join the villagers calling on the wealthy, an annual event on Christmas Eve, my birthday.

Surrounded by servants we chorused for local charity, this carolling crew of the Cotswolds below portraits galore: We Three Kings within tall walls.  A Who’s Who of privileged begetting, lords in tweed, looked down on menials warbling their way through grand equestrian estates.  A feed of mince pies, mulled wine from a silver tray, was served with wit from one squire about booze and Aussies.  I bit off the crust, near choked, but these workers were anxious to amuse the weed.  How funny is a rich man’s joke?  I chased a maid for more wine, flashed a grin at this unwise man, their chief with no chin.

                                                                  *****************

Biog:  Ian C Smith’s work has been published in Antipodes, BBC Radio 4 Sounds,The Dalhousie Review, Griffith Review, San Pedro River Review , Southword, The Stony Thursday Book, & Two Thirds North.  His seventh book is wonder sadness madness joy, Ginninderra (Port Adelaide).  He writes in the Gippsland Lakes area of Victoria, and on Flinders Island.

Jury Service

            Rodney read the letter over and over. Though the letter remained resilient. No matter how many times he read it, the meaning stayed the same. He had been summoned for Jury Service.

            He had dreaded doing Jury Service on account of his inability to moor his thoughts. He knew they would drift from him as they always did. He just couldn’t help it. His indecisiveness played upon his mind. He struggled to decide what to do with himself let alone somebody else’s fate.

            The week that followed was as harrowing as he’d expected it to be. Rodney found himself sat bolt upright in court aiming to listen to both sides of the story. It wasn’t at all like the movies, but he found himself watching the proceedings as if it were. He never could guess the perpetrator. He’d always get it wrong. Even when he was watching if for a second time.

            At times, his mind ran away with the evidence. Placing him at the scene of the crime. Throwing accusations at the accused as if they were complimentary peanuts for him to help himself.

            The man was on trial for the murder of a woman named Anne Barlow. Her asphyxiated body had been discovered under the third arch of the nearby aqueduct by a seven-year-old brother and sister out for a picnic with their parents.

            The accused, Richard Templeton, worked in the same office as Anne. He was a quiet, introverted man. But he was committed to his job. Always punctual. Never missed a day of work. Kept himself to himself. Some of the witnesses who’d been called up said that he’d been obsessed with Anne. But they also confessed to not knowing anything about him. The more Rodney heard about the man, the more he identified with him. The more he heard the evidence against him, the more he identified him to the crime.

            Rodney sat perplexed at the table listening to the other jurors. Nodding at one opinion, then at the other. He felt imprisoned. His eyes kept wandering to the window, leaping outside to freedom, where he saw lawyers wigs dripping ink upon the grazed verges. The humidity of the summer caused the room to contract. The sweat congealed within him.

              “So, what do you think Rodney?” asked Lena looking hard at him.

            Because they were all weary due to their confinement, the words felt more restricted, making it all the more difficult to determine. Rodney cleared the congestion from his throat. “I agree with Frank.” he replied, unsure if he agreed with what he’d just said himself.

            As the days became a week, he knew he didn’t agree with Frank anymore.

            In the end he really couldn’t make up his mind, but he knew he had to say something, and following the majority numbed his responsibility.

            After his decision had been released, Rodney felt free. But as the judge delivered the verdict, he became more and more incarcerated by an abiding sense of guilt.

HOUSE OF MIRRORS

Review of Hikikomori: Poems by Virginia Aronson

Shanti Arts, June 2021

In her deftly constructed poetry chapbook Hikikomori, Virginia Aronson builds a house of mirrors reflecting our social isolation. Her interlocking poems and metaphors draw inspiration from a phenomenon the Japanese define as hikikomori, or “pulling inward,” the impulse to withdraw from the pressures of modern life, which resonates with our current experience of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Told from the point of view of a person afflicted with hikikomori, the poems are succinct in their impact. In the title poem, for example, the narrator inhabits a small room, which is both his world and his inner landscape. He describes himself like a specimen: “alone / in your own world / alone / with yourself / your swirling thoughts.” His urge to confine himself indoors is further outlined in the poem “Brave New World” and echoes Aldous Huxley in reverse. The victim of hikikomori does not experience the evolution of society but its denial.

Cultural pressure and lack of respect for the individual inform the poem “It Can’t Be Helped,” where is the reader is haunted by images of ultimate isolation: “Japan is a suicide forest / the people wandering / in the ancient woods / … / to gut the emptiness.” Sadly, young people are most vulnerable to social oppression and parental pressure as described in “Anime Me.” The child in the poem succumbs to the lure of online entertainment, including video games and binge watching as a means of relaxing and evading social interaction, which sound familiar but frightening in this context as symptoms of deeper withdrawal.

Aronson shows how self-isolation can evolve into a psychological or medical condition. In extreme examples of hikikomori, adult children continue to live with their parents and depend on them for support well into their own middle age: “over forty / lacked self-esteem / locked in my childhood / bedroom / dreamless / alone.” In the poem “Homosocial” while thinking of women in society, the poet writes: “I sit in my dark / womblike room / thinking of them / living in the / present / no future for us.” The tragedy of the hikikomori is characterized by the victims who are no longer able to live or participate in society, excluding them from such essential endeavors as holding employment, having relationships, and raising a family. The individuals and society both suffer.

I found Aronson’s description of hikidashiya, or “those who pull people out,” to be quite chilling. In “Spirited Away,” the narrator endures an extraction reminiscent of attempts to force people to change sexual identity or religion. These violent attacks, often undertaken by one’s family members, are justified as necessary or well meaning, but they are painful to all involved.

One of the most beautiful images in the chapbook is also one of the most haunting. Given the Japanese sense of society and how those excluded tend not to exist, the victim describes his view of the hierarchical culture: “the pyramid leaving / me: / a grain of sand / at the very bottom.” We see the traditions of college, hiring, and corporate meetings evolving into drinking marathons from the eyes of one who has bound himself to nonconformity by retreating to his room.

This sense of loss and rationalization informs many other historical traditions of religious and philosophical inquiry from ancient hermits and monks to modern attempts to achieve enlightenment and insight through meditation or nature. But here the withdrawal feels tragic because of its permanence and emotional toll.  The poem “Day #3652,” for example, finds the poet describing “my life floating past / on a dark thundercloud / … / And if the Earth stops spinning / I’m sure / I won’t notice.” Not only is the victim removed from society and the world, but he experiences a sense of timelessness and eternity in his condition.

My enjoyment of the collection was enhanced by the notes following each poem explaining the aspects of hikikomori in Japanese and English terms. The phenomenon of hikikomori has a rich history in Japanese culture, and I came away with a deeper understanding of hikikomori and its resonance with modern society. Hikikomori is an appropriate metaphor for the lure of staying home and withdrawing into binge watching and gaming despite its potential impact on the individual and society, even before the pandemic. This is the final epiphany of Aronson’s chapbook, that we are all reflected in her house of mirrors.

Virginia Aronson’s collection Hikikomori is available here.

Opal

We drove through the ancestral skeleton of the world and it’s broken harmony. Driven by the song we were searching for, following the path of the pendulum, divided by time – driven, as souls drive their path through the dark forest of the universe. I closed my fist around a mantra and felt the serpentine blood drip through the fingers of my hand that would bury the day under the night and then resurrect in the emerald eyes of Millenia each morning as if for the first time. I push my body through the dense air of insomnia retrieving the hunt for silence in the hour that knocks incessantly on the door of my heart. The indifferent knock, the indifferent questions put to life that some would weigh and sell or place in jars to be kept for the future to solve. The song is pierced and exposed at it’s core is the rotten carcass of a god. The flesh of it’s being withered, the blood long run dry. This is my city, my voice, this is my frozen will and arsenal against the time it takes me to run away from the voice inside that carries a dead abyss.

In the ruins I have placed here my footsteps to freedom, in the wreckage I have designated my home they follow me blindly, loyal as a shadow and as indifferent. The only habitat I can pull from my genes is the knowledge of death carved from time into the form of life. Where else is there to begin? Though the question may be untrue, I feel like this is the only answer. Still, my eye cannot give to itself and the voice can only point and never touch the image that was given flesh this unfinished, burning hour. So I slip through it and pull the cords tighter, as a knot, as a fist round a mantra, as a mouth round a stone.

In this place, in this instance the nomenclature is diced in no fashion other than symbolically. Where dreams live and die like an empty TV set or abandoned theatre. We sift through machinery, once collectable symptoms of our collective disease and become mere mercenary to trend. Ideas pinned to thin air like radio-waves living in the ultra. Born sightless yet carrying out a vision, paid for in the womb. Embodying the embroidered fate of a dusted loop, still now after the depleted force of turning image to flesh and blindness to vision. The hours are mantra dislocated from the jaw, clocking mileage where mirage fails, falling pivots that redact inaction with seismic leverage and sense of occasion. The sense of ourselves spilling through the dense air I force my way through may be known tomorrow when the child that weeps inside me is given a name. When I release what has long since gone from my possession.

In movement

The burnt shadow of your heart still whispers it’s first word that collided with the image lifting itself over the horizon of the earth. When the sun has drunk it’s painful silence and followed blackly the memory and mirror it is chained to, retrieving the gesture will be simple. The race to outsmart this dark venom began early morning. You weigh, singularly, what cannot be reached inside you. The simple essence of a loud voice being disappeared as an object is moved or replaced is a message that points to fracture in our approach to struggle. Really, the silent essence of spirit having split the eye as an atom and fallen blindly into the crater of imagination is where a story ought to begin.

Longingly, I exhume detail for what might suit me as the whole armour, all the while remaining motionless becoming the engine of the void, afraid to tell the story that tells me so often, the black memory the sun is chained to will engulf my heart too. In paroxysm, the image is lifted over the horizon of the earth into a wider gulf and birth we share with the twin eyes of time. One eye that sees with a dead purpose, singularly, as a clock might be wound and forgotten and one that sees as though resurrected each moment it is seen. The hidden depth of what cannot be reached inside you. When I am given to compassion for the ghost (whose song only some will hear as the sun sets and the shadow of the fire escape drapes over the alley) it is the key beneath the blues keeping me awake.

The migrants who died trying to cross the sea for whom the sea is their cross and the dark, dark painful silence we carry that is ours. There is the gesture and measure taking place here all the while. The terrific irony of a moment that carries and sacrifices the weight and purpose of a single heartbeat, shed like a second symmetrical history, covering distance inside the iceberg of thought. Contained inside space, negatively, the surface is frozen, and living the way we may live is the reflection. A glass like plain where I, the engine of the void, may regain a foothold as the lucid speed of the disappeared voice becomes apparent. To welcome the deceived and deceased alike within the structure of movement becoming clear in the gesture the conversation opens with.

It’s true and the measure is correct. The sun empties it’s thought into the black mirror and memory it is chained to by every imaginary eye, swallowing it’s own impregnable music within the fortress of a violent, reoccurring birth none shall escape. What cannot be reached inside you a hidden irony displaces. The future is lulled closer as a spider plucks the strings of her deadly instrument and web. Blinded by the music, her prey enters the kingdom where she alone is queen and reigns over every chaos. 

What else are you keeping secret? The thoughts that woke you at 3am? The symmetry splitting you longitudinally between an East and West – a past forgotten and a life longed for – a line the sun drew with the same invisible hand in the pocket of the killer in the Audubon Ballroom? It ought to be enough that silence can be mapped in your body by touch alone, traced as though the broken mirror of your memory has been cartographically outlined. So that at the border between dream-states, the landscape wakes and spills a lucidity that one might recognise as an aerial photograph of the past. Say something. The secret is a grave in you that you feed the promise of silence. You sit with the knowledge a ghost gave you, 

a Pandora. 

who’s only possession 

like a burning ember

depicted in shadows 

is swallowed whole. And the same lurid darkness follows you home. Stalks the voice you have filtered so carefully so as to not let the ghost fly out. So that they don’t build on the grave(s) you protect and feed with the promise there is a place in your memory where the secret sits, fragmented like an island inhabited by the unspoken.

Jaie Miller is an artist from London, England, and has been published by various journals at various times since starting sharing online.

From Chains to Freedom: A Journey of Freedom for the Black Man

Review by Dr. Bianca Stewart, MD

Mr. Michael Robinson’s published work, “From Chains to Freedom: A Journey of Freedom for the Black Male” is a beautiful depiction of the intricacies of race relations that is effortlessly executed in Mr. Robinson’s distinguishable style. His work is provocative yet, delicate. As a black woman, his work is raw, unfiltered, and in so many ways, comforting. “From Chains to Freedom” takes the reader on a journey of the resilience of the African American race from the Mother Land to Jim Crow and to Modern America.

He draws inspiration from Langston Hughes’ “Suicide Note” in his “Seas of Freedom on the Horizon” where he articulates the torment of the slave trade and speaks of death not as an enemy but as an old friend — “In the sky ahead the horizon calls, Calling him by name each day they sail. On a night when the moon had receded, And all was sleeping, the sea took him in.”

“Beginning of Grief” and “Crosses for Black Men” recounts the trepidation of the Jim Crow era — remembering the “when the light of the burning cross casts a shadow” and how, even now, “Four hundred years later, a rope still waits…”

In spite of it all, “From Chains to Freedom” is work about peace and hope. In “Midnight with God,” Mr. Robinson reminds us that “A desire for freedom has not been banished from his invocations” and leaves us with a message of “Some Place Special” “…where the sun speaks to the moon, While the mountains listen to the wind’s singing…” “A shooting star streaks across the sky.”

From Chains to Freedom is available directly from Michael Robinson, please contact him at mjrobinson@rollins.edu

 
 Sky Burial
  
 Soldiers all heard the stories, folklore of the shaped-
 charge monster, unbeatable IED, flipped an Abrams
 on its back, the fable goes, until it's like they're
 waiting for it, for today, for the sudden protean
 flower of sand and flame, what a second before
 was the lead vehicle -- now a rain of shrapnel
 against bulletproof glass of Humvees that follow,
 now a fiery-dark windstorm blowing up a desert floor.
  
 The long second where one's intake of breath stops
 for an under the breath "God," a place where you
 can only watch, in the long second before radio talk
 between vehicles, frantic security halt, bracing
 for secondary IEDs, possible complex attack, in
 that second I imagine three soldiers calm like yogis,
 shamayim all around in the sudden sky, I wonder
 is it a journey to nowhere -- in the long second.
  
 The recovery team, later, finds nothing, not a piece
 of skin, no bones, nothing to ship home, come back
 with a pretzel-shaped steering wheel they show
 to officers around camp.  And I think, these three
 are burned into the desert now, a Shroud of Turin,
 never going home – home, where a memorial service's
 beauty of flowers is nothing to say goodbye to –
 nothing to cling to but a folded flag.
  
 Home, where memory of a face, sound of a strong
 voice, are offered as a gift to eternity, grief stopping
 speech, silently -- the idea of a place where loved ones
 continue to be loved needed to let a heart keep beating,
 let lips open to mouth a silent "goodbye."
  
  
  
 Widow 
  
 One of the peaceful places in Kabul, outside
 the grounds around Embassy Row, an open
 stretch of grass, a few trees, and chalk-colored
 stones, was my convoy's frequent lunch stop,
 pulling the Humvees under the limbs of cedars.
  
 We'd eat the spicy lamb meat, rolled fajita-like
 in naan bread, then rolled up in the flowing script
 of a daily newspaper and bought by our interpreter
 from his street-vendor cousin, in the shade
 and sound of songbirds.
  
 The first day there I was glad to stop in this quiet,
 away from the ripe stone street channels of sewage,
 the congestion of busy markets and honking horns,
 past an Afghan checkpoint that kept out most traffic,
 but as Americans we could go anywhere,
  
 So, I watched the eager sergeant major who'd
 been commanding this Kabul patrol for two months
 unroll the food he was unafraid to eat, in this quiet
 of cedars, wondered if the paper's stories were Pashto
 or Dari, looked at the hazy mountains that ring the city,
  
 And at the woman in full blue burqa that billowed up
 in gusts of wind as she sat in the high green grass opposite
 the dirt road from us alone.  After a while the interpreter
 took a lamb bolani from the unrolled paper on the hood
 to her, and an arm appeared from the burqa to take it.
  
 So I asked who she was, and Hashem said she's a widow,
 her husband was an Afghan soldier killed in an outlying
 province.  The next day we fed her again, and I asked
 why she sat here, and Hashem said, "to beg."  The soldiers
 who patrolled let her stay because of her army husband.
  
 And the next day I wanted to ask where she went nights,
 but part of the purpose of lunch was the mission brief
 by the sergeant major for the rest of the day, so I just
 wondered as SGM Sanchez talked about itinerary
 and ammo counts,
  
 Imagining a mudbrick house where she was barely
 tolerated by relatives, driven out in the day to beg
 in her blue ghost costume, seen on every woman
 outside the city, but less so here in Kabul.  Every day
 for a month she was there.  One day she was gone.
  
 
 
 Late Friday Night at the VFW Bar
  
 When beers become gradients of time, gradually
 taking good-natured men at a corner table back
 like years from baseball scores and current politics,
 loosening stories from those lives that led them here,
 to the days when their hearts were full of darkness.
  
 An Iraq vet recalls firecracker sounds of small arms fire
 from windows, the flip flop clomping of tank treads
 as it pulled up and wound its turret, its round devouring
 a building's walls, turbaned men thrown like dolls, falling
 with collapsed masonry over the sandy street.
  
 A Vietnam vet tells of sudden ambush in a delta fertile
 with green trees and rice paddies, unloading magazines,
 afterwards finding his spent casing sprinkled over a buddy,
 and when he kneeled down to brush them off, saw
 his own reflection in his stilled friend's staring eyes.
  
 These are men who can conjure violent figures,
 in nightmare worlds where all options seem bad,
 where no parables are found that guarantee survival,
 only heroes that may have saved a buddy's life
 to die themselves in a mutilation of any happy ending.
  
 Last call, and they rise from their stories, glancing
 at the American flag tacked to the wall beside a reflective
 Michelob sign, and it gives some relief, some meaning
 as they head for the door under the red exit sign, outside
 to lead normal lives and keep terrible secrets.
  
   
  
 The Ironised Voice of the Soldier's Ghost, 500 Years
 After His Desertion
  
 "A skeleton was discovered with sword and knives under the old
 Dubingiai bridge in Lithuania's Lake Asveja. Scientists with Vilnius
 University examined the body and said that the person was male and
 died in the 16th century, though they don't yet know why he died."
 --November 12th, 2020
  
  
 I expected to lie down in battle by the bodies of men, the dark
 folding me as death already folded them.
  
 Bemused by the play of light on ripples I tripped awkwardly
 on the bridge, my inner eye looking for my heroic future.
  
 The shock of the cold water was like a klaxon cry as my armor sank me
 into this ethereal world.
  
 These five hundred years below water, only fishermen's boats appeared
 disappeared by day above in the distance.
  
 At night, well above me pinwheels of stars spun their ancient patterns,
 But in the gloom I never saw them.
  
 Mourner's eyes be pools of sorrow for loyal knights who die
 for the kingdom, unlike these eager eyes that now pick and measure.
  
 With what is left of me I tell you my pain was not in death or drowning
 but that no blow flies came to buzz and whisper:
  
 "You are dead on the field of battle" -- embarrassment my pain,
 like the water it still saturates me.
  
    
  
 June 4, 1937
  
 Picasso adds the last thing to Guernica
 a light bulb gives unity to chaos:
 bodies bend and bruise
 wrack and burn
 scream at the sky
 sword broken
 baby dead
 arms outstretched
  
 The highest figure the bull
 still on its feet
 tail floating
 like Luftwaffe
 in the sky above
  
 People forever trampled in firebomb winds
 of shrapnel, Basque victims
 of other people's wars
  
 A light stays on forever
 lest we forget
   

A US Army combat veteran, Steven Croft lives happily on a barrier island off the coast of Georgia on a property lush with vegetation and home to various species of birds and animals. His poems have appeared in Liquid Imagination, The Five-Two, Ariel Chart, Eunoia Review, Anti Heroin Chic, Synchronized Chaos, and other places, and have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. 

Five Poems
Words by Hongri Yuan
Translated by Yuanbing Zhang
 
A Mysterious Giant
 
There is another sun in the body of earth,
it is the light of lights, cool flames.
Where the palaces and pavilions are golden and transparent,
houses a mysterious giant.
 
Last night I heard a call in my dreams
and came to his vast hall.
His smile made you to forget yourself,
reminded me of a ancient poetry—— “the rising sun has just risen”.
2.12 10.2015
 
神秘的巨人
 
大地的体内有另一轮太阳
它是光之光 清凉之火焰
那儿的宫殿楼台金色透明
住着一位神秘的巨人
 
昨夜我梦中听到召唤
来到了他那巨大的殿堂
他的笑容让你忘了自己
令我想起古人之诗 旭日始旦
2015.2.12上午10时
 
 
Gold Civilization in Prehistoric
 
Fifteen million years ago,
there was a civilization of gold on the earth.
The sun wrote the words of gold,
the moon wrote the words of silver;
all things on earth had its own language.
Where do the gods live in now？
They have never disappeared,
they house still on the earth,
just you aren't able to see them.
5.19.2013
 
史前之黄金文明
 
一千五百万年前
大地上曾有过黄金的文明
太阳写下黄金的词语
月亮写下白银的词语
万物皆有自己的语言
那些神人们现在何方
他们不曾消失
他们仍然在大地之上
只是无法看见
2013.5.19
 
 
Giants' Homes
 
The fleets of stars were speeding towards me,
They came from the distant galaxies.
In prehistoric times, they were the ancient gods,
their ancient kingdoms existed in the depths of the earth.
Oh, they gave me the rolls of gold books,
let me to seek the swords of gods.
The ancient earth will be golden and transparent,
hold up the newborn homes of giants.
2.3.2015
 
巨人的家园
 
星辰的舰队向我驶来
他们来自遥远的星系
在史前 他们是古老的诸神
在大地的深处 有他们古老的王国
哦 他们赠我一卷卷金书
让我去寻找那一把把神剑
这古老的大地将金色透明
托起新的巨人的家园
2015.2.3
 
I Saw a Golden City
 
I saw a golden city
made itself invisible in the earth.
Those ancients were still alive.
I often visit them in my dream.
 
Their eyes were very bright.
as if they did not know the passage of time.
I saw myself in ancient times,
he told me that the world just was a phantom.
 
He gave me an ancient golden sword,
let me to go and kill the greedy Python.
These demons ruled the world.
let the mankind forget the ancient ancestors.
6 .23, 2011
 
我看见一座金城
 
我看见一座金城
隐形在大地之中
那些古人还活着
我常在梦中去做客
 
他们的眼睛格外璀璨
仿佛不知时光的流逝
我见到了古代的自己
他告诉我人间只是幻影
 
他赠我一把太古的金剑
让我去击杀贪婪的蟒蛇
这些妖魔统治了人间
让人类忘记了古老的祖先
2011年6月23日
 
He is My Immortal Soul
 
The eyes of years are the maze of stars.
In a gigantic  palace,
I have seen the God of Gods.
He is smiling at me in heavens.
I'm thousand years in the world, which is just his moment.
He is my immortal soul,
and the universe——transparent crystal ball, in the palm of his hand.
6.6.2016
 
他是我的不朽的灵魂
 
岁月的眼睛  是星辰的迷宫
在一座巨大的殿堂
我见到了  那诸神之神的上帝
他在天庭之上向我微笑
我在人间的千年  只是他的瞬间
他是我的不朽的灵魂
而宇宙  透明的水晶之球  在他的手掌之上
2016.6.6
 
Bio:Hongri Yuan, born in China in 1962, is a poet and philosopher interested particularly in creation. Representative works include Platinum City, Gold City, Golden Paradise , Gold Sun and Golden Giant. His poetry has been published in the UK, USA ,India ,New Zealand, Canada and Nigeria.
 
Yuanbing Zhang (b. 1974), is Mr.Yuan Hongi's  assiastant and translator.He is a Chinese poet and translator, 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