I Audition to become Asian

I Audition to become Asian

I am white, but I love Asia
Mandarin is my second language
Korean dramas are my favourite media
I admire the rise of a people
Who are more industrious

Who age better and respect the collective
As noon every day I wonder
Why I live in a French City
When it’s Asia that I love
But, the truth is, I’ve a lot to learn

From Japan, India, Korean, China
I’m not Asian so there is so much
I do not understand, about the East
Being a western, I cannot pronounce
Their names or name their cities easily

I still have trouble differentiating faces
But the first step in becoming
A world citizen, is forgetting our last name
Forgetting where our ancestors happened
To breed and farm and fish

We are one people, but the Asian
Ones stand out to me, like a younger ambition
Born of ancient traditions
I recognize the future is Asian.

On The F r i n g e s of E n l i g h t e n m e n t

On The F r i n g e s of E n l i g h t e n m e n t

I am the beginning’s mind
In love with many possibilities
So I became a poet
Without accepting the fact

That everything changes
We are impotent
We cannot find perfect composure

Life is a koan ready to be experienced
Transience is that nature
And nurture of the game
Art is like the discipline

Of creating a reoccurring situation
Where the world is its own magic
And we are visitors, it’s that simple

So won’t you stay for a while?
Everything is perfect
And understanding yourself
Allows you to understand everything

And ultimately, we must exist
Right here and now
I am the beginner at love

For only recently
Did I recognize her everywhere.

The Silent Revolution is Inevitable

– Pictured, Tina Chang (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tina_Chang)

Ascent of Asia

I am haunted by how little our children
Know, what we have done
To each other, to those we deemed
Beneath us, to the Earth…..

How a republic falls and how
Democracy can lie, how News can be distorted
How money hides its debt
By printing more, by pretending we are alright

Or worse, an old idea of Nationalism
Idols of a world out dated, euro-centric
I’m haunted by how little
Millennials realize Asia is the new Queen

Why do they not learn Mandarin, Korean?
We forever think we are the center
Of the globe, but I’m not a daughter
Or a son of East or West

I am haunted by how little writers
Write about revolution, about change
We cannot always repeat what others have said
We cannot always unravel in our

Personal voice, there’s a secret stairway
To broader concerns, more existential themes
There, the ultimate fiction is reality
There is a new world ready to be born
Will you join?

Such Anniversary as Language

Many a phrase, I will never say again
How fruitful are the crickets
In the evening, the darkness itself

Speaks a Billion Suns
How lovely, is the Thunder’s tongue
That cannot spell lightning

But forgives the fact
For many choirs of the winds
That dance along the Tide’s tail

Breaking in bright mornings
Along the sleeping shores
Many a phrase, I will never push

With joy, out from my humble mouth
With a hush of English so deep
Romance is fiction, poetry does recall –

How fruitful the silence of the sun
That warms not by sound, but by waves
To spell slower glory would be to die.

Photo Courtesy: http://www.deviantart.com/art/Flowers-in-December-VII-412112014