Poet-Today | Yuan Changming | The Arts-Muse Fair

No Art without Startle: Formational Idioms in English Words

No belief without a lie
No business without sin
No character without an act
No coffee without a fee
No courage without rage
No culture without a cult

No entrance without a trance
No Europe without a rope
No freedom without a reed
No friendship without an end
No glove without love
No ghost without a host

No groom without a room
No infancy without fancy
No life without if
No malady without a lady
No manifestation without man
No mason without a son

No millionaire without a lion
No passage without a sage
No pharmacy without harm
No plant without a plan
No prevention without an event
No product without a duct

No sight without a sigh
No slaughter without laughter
No spring without a ring
No substance without a stance
No think without ink
No truth without a rut

Towards Dao (or the Way)

                                                                                   

                                                           

    To/To

                                                Seek/Balance

                                    Yang/Yin

                        From/With

            Yin/Yang

Is/Isn’t

The same/The same

As/As

                                    To/To

                                                Seek/Balance

                                                            Yin/Yang

                                                From/With

                                    Yang/Yin

                        Before/Unless

            We/You

Zigzag/Zagzig

            Our Path/Your Way

                        With/Without

                                    A thought/Any feeling

                                                About/Towards

                                                            Nature/God

The English Languacultural Genetic Map

            IIIIIIIIIIIIII

                IIIIIIII

                IIIIIIII

                IIIIIIII

                IIIIIIII

                IIIIIIII

                IIIIIIII

            IIIIIIIIIIIIIII

Close to Granville Street, Friday Evening  

All construction noises gone. Except fewer

And fewer cars swishing by. A vegi dinner

I watched wolf warriors. She stared at

Her smartphone. No visitor as on every

Other eve. I thought of making love

I want. No! She is no longer a woman

Let alone mine. No internal communication of

Any kind. So aged we can no longer go to bed

Earlier or later. I wandered awhile online

Trump again. Doklam standoff continued

No fire between Guam and NK. No body

Contact either. No more. The bed is too small

For two big different dreamers. However

Always too large for a small stanza  

Metamegaphysics

Few are really aware of

Such universes

Existing beyond our own

Even fewer of so many other versions

Of selfhood living

In each of them, let alone

This simple secret:

           

At the depth of consciousness

Lives a quantum

    Or soul as we prefer to call it

A particle, demon and/or angel dancing

The same dance afar, far apart

In an entanglement

 **************

Yuan Changming published monographs on translation before leaving China. With a Canadian PhD in English, Yuan currently edits Poetry Pacific with Allen Yuan and hosts Happy Yangsheng in Vancouver; credits include ten Pushcart and three Best of the Net nominations,  Best of the Best Canadian Poetry (2008-17), BestNewPoemsOnline, New Coin, Rowayat, Threepenny Review and 1,399 others across 41 countries.