​​​Poetry                                                            By Changming Yuan

East &/vs West: A Mini History of Human Civilization

Yin & Yang
                                    Towards
                                                                          0 vs 1

On My Birthday & Off

I don’t remember how many years old
I am, but I do care about my birthday, a time
When I can imagine getting good wishes
Or words. Rather than having a party
With a big cheese cake or a bowl of longevity
Noodles, I would prefer to leave home
For a lonely walk in the country, wandering
In a poetic wonderland, where I stop to reflect:

For more than a decade I have done what I could
By way of a poem, but since it is unlikely I can
Do anything with it, I find it the proper
Occasion to write one last stanza just
To commemorate my yearly visits to
             Qucheng, Homerburgh, Dantefield
             Shakespeareston, Goethestadt
             Pushkingrad, Baudelaireville
             Nerudastad, Frostdale, & Tagorerboro

Infinitival Infinities: a Sonnet in Fragments


To be               a matter when there’s no question
Or not to be     a question when nothing really matters

        To sing            with a frog squatting straight
On a lotus leaf in the Honghu Lake    near Jingzhou

  To recollect             all the pasts, and mix them
Together like a glass of           cocktail

       To build                    a nest of meaning
Between two broken branches on            Ygdrasil

To strive    for deity
                      Longevity           and
                            Even happiness

To come          on and off line every other while

To compress   consciousness into a file, and upload it
    Onto a nomochip

                  To be      daying, to             die
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​Yuan Changming lives a posthumous life in Vancouver, where he edits Poetry Pacific with Allen Yuan at poetrypacific.blogspot.ca.