White Nights of Beijing

China, do you hear whispers of the people?
I’ve written down the words
That a country doesn’t dare to speak
But the firewalls are large and heavy

And Hong Kong remains lethargic too
The umbrella revolution didn’t get far
Can students change the world?

Let the leaves rustle and the economy slow
The horn cries and the people do not move
It’s back to the drawing room, I hear
The factories are becoming robotized

You travel an entire day to bring
Your Mother a bouquet of flowers
She has never received one before like this

You came to Canada in idleness and prosperity
But now you realize the years pass silently
In the homeland, while you think of yourself
The people suffer, more miserable than you

I’ve not lit the candles but I know
Which way the wax runs, in times of
Masks worn in dark corners of Beijing

The air is no longer pure, sunsets gloom
With the light of the drunk sounds of
Brainwashing and patriotic outcries
This is not North Korea, but this is control

I speak those words, today, that come
Born of the spirit of history, I know
How the decades go, preserving tradition

Enhancing glory, bright bouquets that press
The people into the streets, without answers
A clavichord of feudalism staining
The times with guilt, that some make it

While the sea of people must go without
I will not belong to a world of inequality
I will not thrive until we can share it.

P.S. A world of nations and patriotism is not a free world. One world, one future.

Independence Day Poem

The patriots are stuck fooling themselves
There are no nations, only corporations
Governments who manipulate the people

The peasants are conditioned
By a state-run media, the officials are bought
With pomp and parade, you will be duped

Into thinking your Country is the best
But these borders no longer exist
The bonfires and illuminations

These Independence Day shows
Is to cover a corrupt police-state
An oligarchy where the same clans

Inherit the vote, the idea of great nations
Is the greatest myth, China and the United States
Thrive due to the control they exhibit

On their peoples, the psychological control
The creation of “terror” enemies
To perpetuate their greed, all for stars and stripes

On flags, or for expansion of a culture
That personifies all that is glamorous and fake
The presidents do not preserve our dignity

In a system that promotes an individualism
That is the buying into a mechanism of slavery
Slavery to possessions, slavery to inequality
Slavery to a false sense of superiority
If that is patriotism, I want no part in it.

To The place-names of the Future

To The place-names of the Future

You soul, are terrifying and strange
And beautiful with the spirit of poetry
When you weep, everyone knows
How to love and regret and want
Leaning on the balcony railing
Of literature, is enough to be read

If you know how the universe holds
Itself together, with the hands of
The downtrodden sharing, and the
Masters hoarding and profiting
There is no revolution that lasts

Corporations become the new feudal kingdoms
Holding monopolies like Google or Apple
Mere footnotes in the future I am sure
You soul, make up your own destiny
And that’s what I am here to witness

How patient is language, waiting
To be reborn in ovals open all day
To live behind sunblinds and countrysides
And to be spoken on new planets
Where restless silence no longer

Must hug the barren innocence
Of uninhabited landscapes
You soul, are wild and terrifying
And in your sovereign intensity
I think I’ve been changed by your advertisements
The archaic bleached faces of who we were.

The Death of Pacifism

The Death of Pacifism

Here we grew
Orphaned out of love
Inebriated by history

Gloating about our potential
This youth of arrow and sword
This strength that will wane

This beauty that will cusp
From mother married to grief
And father sworn to selfishness

Here we dreamed of fathers
And wished for harbour-mates
With a body of writing like a balm
An outflung prayer to stars
The temptation to never write again

And cowards to barely truly live
That was our moment
An underground rebellion of one
An innocence endured like purity
A poverty knelt in the spirituality

Of simplicity, did we grow foolish
Or were we simply ignorant, uneducated
Too trusting of a wicked world?

Psalm 8 – Capitalism

O Lord my God, let me not say
Let me not lie, “my God is best”
For each values experience uniquely
Selah. How many Gods have we

Invented? Rending to piece the idols
Of other gods, for our own
Cherished idols? We might worship
Money, but even the God of the

Marketplace, becomes false with debt
The Lord shall judge the people
The Nations shall suffer their karma
The Americas shall be torn apart

O Lord, let it not be said we were
Good Christians, praising only our
Version of right, our emblems of patriotism
Let it be known, we were also cruel

Unfair, corrupt, as any other Masters
That Lorded over other men, that filled
The realms with images of our likeness
Making the world love money, like we did

Capitalism was the plague that we proliferated
We rewarded evil, until the corporations
Became the high priests of our home countries
Feudal, full of disdain for the common people

Barons, full of spite for justice or freedom
O Lord, in thine anger, if though shall destroy
Parts of this world in thy holy crusade
Let history show the white man
Persecuted others to be like him.

global connectivity

it’s survival here, nothing new
lungs knotted by thirst
sunheat in our heart, starving to belong

it’s corrupt the way
the social feeds are telepathic
last chance for freedom
not likely, when water goes on the stock-markets

I’m pinned by this world
like as the love for my criminal child
the kind of wound that

is never quite urgent enough to heal
but sticks around like deformity
“heal the world”, there are too many
bodies you say to feed the planet

it’s survival down here, at the ends
stomach growling to be someone
heart’s pitter-patter against the gloom

our fragility was really contagious
the world learned how
to suffer together, it was a kind
of progress, to realize we all belonged

to the same economy, a doomed currency
where the sun was thrown, raised and lowered
for the number of years we had left

before some tipping point of our anarchy
until we have to depart, to say goodbye
we make do, with teaspoons and testimony
with words from vague saints who were cripples

we learned to see, a bit of ourselves
in everyone who suffered, in how they fought.

art courtesy of: http://www.deviantart.com/art/Global-Warming-86554791

Last Protest Against Corruption

From the white podium
of my imagination, I sleep
with the dream language

of the rest of humanity
living in the republic of treason
In a world I no longer believe in

verily verily I walk the gardens there
where sarcasm has become the
dominant narrative for surviving

Nihilism, I look for the keys
Of revolution or change, but there
Are non here, politics has become

the language of mockery, infidels
the criminals who own us now
it is truly no evidence of a great soul

to live a long life here, maybe
withstanding these cruel games
From the white podium of my imagination

I have learned, how to die well
with my dream language
I trade in apparitions, and refuse
to live standing still like a dead beetle.

Photo Courtesy: http://www.deviantart.com/art/Anna-412756504

Poem from the 21st Century

My inner artist burns
to build a new world
past the last revolution
for something special like

Freedom and equality for all
from an umbrella of social concern
it is the youth that change
the status quo, certainly not

The hooks of flowers, the marriages
family builders, who must
play their accustomed niche
the biological imperatives

where years blur in ancestral worship
descendant divinity, evolution’s
meditation on forms: self-replication
my inner artist burns

For this corrupt economy to fail
past the years of anarchy
for something special like
an ethical communal setting

It is the youth who envision
a better future, the elders
no longer have the courage
to act upon once lofty ideals.

Photo Courtesy: http://www.deviantart.com/art/Revolution-91757837