no good news
comes calling
at six o’clock
in the morning
Author: zdunno03
In Reply to P’ei Ti by Wang Wei
The cold river spreads boundless away.
Autumn rains darken azure-deep skies.
You ask about Whole-South Mountain:
the mind knows beyond white clouds.
translated by David Hinton
something I used to say, or at least according to Jimmy Powell I said it, though I seem to have lost it in the fog that covers much of those long ago years when alcohol, pinball, and bean & beef burritos from Lucy’s El Adobe at 2:30 in the am seemed to play a much too significant part in my life but thanks to Jimmy and also Randy Signor my memory is jarred awake on occasion to those moments of lucidity and foolishness that have left their impressions on my life
if I knew
I’d know,
but I don’t know
so I don’t know
a philosophy of sorts
you step off
the curb,
you cross
the street
friendship: how it works
you get back
what you put in
and you stop
putting in
when you stop
getting anything
back
Pepper Eyes by Sung Po-jen
lavishing poems on the first spring dawn
prayers for a thousand years
conquering winter and defying old age
outlasting the ice and the snow
translated by Red Pine
Fisherman’s Hat by Sung Po-jen
anchored out among the gulls
cold rain lashing his hat of leaves
he doesn’t mind fearsome waves
since discovering the joys afloat
translated by Red Pine
from a line by Sung Po-jen
my voice hoarse
my throat dry
trying to reach
heaven’s ear
amid all the chatter
in the air
Crane on a Pine Crying to Heaven by Sung Po-jen
waking from a Red Cliff dream
black robe soaked with rain
trying to reach Heaven’s ear
it stands atop a pine
translated by Red Pine
Profile by Sung Po-jen
face to face is problematic
from the side the view is clearer
otherwise neither would know
the length of the other’s nostrils
translated by Red Pine
Leonard Durso 