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Andrew Duggan Oct 2017
A kite highly hovering above the Fen
Waiting for the moons shadows
A land of slant truth
Afraid of vigorous force
And people who can swallow sorrow

So what happens now
With hidden truth

Love affairs do not last for long
And floating life is too strong to be fleeting
We all learn to watch the setting sun
As the windy mist floats over a lifeless
Lancang River

As moments stand still
The Tianshan Mountains
Knock against the stars
And proclaim ‘I am truth’

And still more than once
I seize the passionate beauty in the universe

But that was a time
When grayed haired poets
Would look up at the autumn moon
And truth would be satisfied.

Now it is nothing to those who have won or lost
And there is no Himalayan height.
Andrew Duggan Oct 2017
I heard a story today of
Dead bodies dancing in Madagascar
Of ignorance lingering
And political faith put to the test

New conceptions like another Sunday
Void of inspiration and
Poets of drowsy thoughts
Drowning below the fractured surface

A poet is always lost in translation
Too many unknown houses
Too many cosmopolitan pacifists
Shouting at blank TV screens

I had a story once
On truth, necessity,
And scientific hypotheses
The darkness swallowed everything
As the dancing ladies sang
The asylums emptied.

On the dull paths by the river
No graffiti of love
I take a deep sworn vow
To look death in the face
No matter what the dance
No matter what the consequences

This is the shape of things to come
A lack of poets, who sing,
Not to the burdensome face of beauty
But the drifting bodies
You never let settle around you.

How do you characterize a story?
Andrew Duggan Oct 2017
Raining in Taiyuan
A kind of rapture
Waiting to rise into the sky
Her only dream was menacing fanaticism of love
A constant companion
Like tinnitus of the night
Always singing, a constant companion

Crawling in search of understanding
She died long ago
Remnants of herself
And torrents of whispers
Weight of loss, weight of guilt
A vacuum of memories
Draining into the city sewer.

So much left undone
No voice to shout now
The girl you used to know
Walking by the Fen River
Bodies lie in the undrinkable water
Disputing the time of the event.
Andrew Duggan Oct 2017
I was looking for information of any kind
And met a man who said he can contact the dead
Just walking by the hospital
I was ready to leave
“You feel too deeply’
How can I not hear
The sleepless souls
Who lost their shape
Under the weight
Of sins dark shadow
“I haven’t told you anything yet”
Just fragments
Time and future have no image
Not one, of all the people
Challenged the silence

Walking ashes of the dead
Trying to act casual
Now just talking dust
“Can’t you smell the scattered echoes?”
That we should not hear at this time
Is there a bloodier crime

The last fish in the Fen
Wounded all over
I tried not to see
But he was dying

The burnt horizon of the Taihang Mountains
Disappears beyond cold grey winds.

...Your earth. Your river. Your life
I did not ask
Do the dead have names?
Andrew Duggan Oct 2017
Would you be the sun or the moon?
I would be the moon
No one grows tired of the moon

Imperfect body
A dark side
Often hidden
All alone
Cloaks of silence
In a sea of stars

Peeking into the soul
In its North West scenery night
Old men know when there is no light.

A sorrowful woman who no longer
has to pretend, in the presence of the moon.

I am different from the sun

But she is devoted to me
We found comfort in the darkness
Mirrored in your being

I would be the moon.
I am the moon on Earth
Mid-Autumn Day here in China.
Andrew Duggan Oct 2017
James Corden says
275 days and 11,660 people
died from gun violence
in America.
But I am not American
Shocking to me.
Don’t talk about
Five people shot in Kansas
Three dead
No news from Kansas today
When from the deep sky
Thoughts as simple as death
Words as hard as bullets
You will pile into the deep sky
And splash people to death
Before you see the unruly back roads
Of  your thoughts.

Wake-up and see your blood and mine
Are mingled.
From Las Vegas to Manchester
We give up the same breath
Metal from which the bullets are made
Before the greed of hollow men.
Andrew Duggan Sep 2017
I the bird this morning
Standing on my windowsill
Confident and proud
A soul dancing in heaven
Lost in a lyrical dream.
The end of the grasslands
And stone becomes stone.

To sad to mourn it raised its
head to an imaginary sky.
Bringing darkness to a
momentary sun.

It serves the people,
never stopping
A one-time-hero

The dissatisfied
Those that wear tattered
uniforms
All ask
'What else there might be'
And climb to play the hero.

Standing still for ten seconds
But 10 seconds can be longer
An interval between the course
of war.

Now on the road again.
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