Feeling Something Innermost
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[Poetry Samples of Peter K. Y. Chang
Awful Earthquake
(Condolence over 20,867 casualties in Taiwan Earthquake on 9/21/99)
Too many tears mingled
with rubble and mud
and numerous corpse
of flesh and blood
The awful earthquake
crushed the whole Island.
All hearts of victims
have not rehabilitated
I sat tight at the crossroads
of life and death.
A cry from ancient Sodom
echoed urgent solicitation
It was a close shave
as Abraham saved Lot.
I'll never been a pillar of salt,
I'll never count on my fate
CONDOLENCE
Fame of 20th century, merits or defects,
princess Diana and Mother Teresa
one after another, a sudden
death brought them together
in people's love, and people in their love
to be struck with awe and dole.
Diana, a fabled life of the belle,
ended up with a heartbreak scathe.
The diadem that deprived her
of royal family regained from people,
crowned in her black wreckage place de I'Alma,
has become her throne.
Teresa, another queen of Calcutta,
mother of the slum, acquired
angelic passion with irreducible honor.
Among the shrouds she worked
for God to rescue the hopeless
with old-fashioned Nobel Prize.
The gallant adventures of Diana
and her wealthy playboy seemed
more touchable than a fatal car accident
in the way the world wailing
through the bloody prey of tabloid paparazzi
with bouquets heaped and heaped.
How was an old abstinent nun?
Could Teresa earn more wreathes
since she billed, cooed and wedded
with her sacramental crucifixion?
No matter how serendipitous,
not any paparazzo would hound.
With their costly sacrifices, at all rates
both deceased vulnerable celebrities
had done the best for a good cause.
Only their denouements were so disparate
Whoever bridges a gap in the hedge of life
he needs more love, even to give life!
A man from the Middle East
Beyond the desert, he was
shot in the dust of war;
evicted by the brute strength
out of Persian Gulf.
Under the shadow of death,
It was a haunting nightmare.
Peace has hovered between
UN force and a warlord.
Time froze in his tears
not for a jihad nor an oil field,
but the precious blood
shed from unknown sibling.
Lay huddled up in the dream
of freedom, I never met
a subjugated soul as such
to love as God has loved me.
The Voice
The voice lingered through the windowpane.
The voice I reckoned not among the world,
yet the voice kept pace with my pulse.
There was none to hide behind the windowpane,
but the voice still tiptoed,
and I felt the voice clambered up my heart,
calmed my throb, and my throe was allayed.
The voice as elf frolicked on the windowpane,
and supinely laid,
reminded me of the lullaby in my nursery room,
so familiar that the voice tallied with my memory.
The voice gilt the windowpane as sheeny as a mirror,
reflected the sphere of my life,
merits and faults---- never inverted----
as my parents always encouraged and tolerated me.
I opened the windowpane, interior and exterior,
and cordially invited all my rivals as friends
Now, they are so kind, meek and patient.
Now, the voice tells us that her name is Love!
Mom and Her Little Girl
Unseemly grown in the backyard, see!
those thorny blackberries are our favorite.
Unlike the fig tree cursed by Jesus,
they elicit the truth from the naive talk:
'I don't pick it though I am craving for,
but what if mom gets hurt?'
She did not even hurt by a smallest burr
since mom has escorted her out,
Yet she always discerns the best fruit
that are deeply among the worst thorns.
Just because Jesus was crowned by thistles
and thorns, and pierced on the cross!
Poem of Children
Man always leans down as a big leaning tower
to stare at children,
or shoves at them to scale the heights
as an alpinist used to do.
Jesus does not thrust His desire upon us,
but only gives children
the privilege to enter His kingdom
that most of us have not deserved.
Poem of Picnic
Going picnic with the food for thought will be wiser
than enjoying any grand banquet at five-star hotel
We sustain ourselves not merely by the edible food,
but also the word of God that is all on the house.
There is no telling that manna can be falling again
If we have gone astray in the wilderness of life, we need
to ask for those provision like wafers made with honey.
Uh, that is most antiquated food reserved by Moses!
A Tug of War
A lady, who sailed close to the wind
in writing, ventured on her new fiction.
Her words quoted from the angel.
Her pen went athwart to the devil.
A tug of war started on the borderline
of good and evil in her innermost.
Uh! Teresina, win back, Teresina won!
I am your cheerleader, cheer you on!
La, la, la…la! Everybody hails her queen!
Here she faces a dilemma of attacking on
or evacuating from the antagonist
whom she has just fallen in love with.
Teresina! Awake to your own words,
a theory that makes us all immortal.
Put away from the tree of knowledge!
Let your pen keep on the Stone Tablets!
Look before you leap, look at my hands!
I am playing Moses, and you Joshua.
La, la, la…la! You must overcome
such a pitched battle in your writing. Now!
Asking Mr. Bill Gates
What does it count, Mr. Bill Gates? Except a great sigh!
It doesn't happen in your Virtual Windows at all.
When people like you are oblivious to a big quake,
in Seattle many years ago, since they used to peek
at your Windows instead of TV and press showing
the natural calamity of San Francisco, LA, Mexico,
Taiwan, El Salvador and India……and then,
they sort of felt it might like Virtual Hyper-experience!
You built Windows on the heads of X & Y-generations,
let them grow up diversely as a prolific goddess did.
The same as Nobel invented his dynamite that
benefited both good and evil, you induced good and evil
deep into the innermost of mankind……and lo! Bill,
your gigantic eyes, higher than Babel Tower, look down
a deformed world flinching from your Virtual Windows.
Really? the quake would have shaken down all Seattle,
only it's been your headquarter, you made stronghold
with specific Virtual Windows to frame people
in your mind for your determination to conquer Nature?
Before Dawn
Before dawn the sea was serene
The moderate slow-paced voice
Of her footsteps from pole to pole
Overnight lulled the traveling children to sleep
Whereas she was tired and yawned
Nestled to the breast of strand
Breathed like a child, and dimpled
She looked so young as if time never lapsed
But her beauteous dream of home was changing
And I dare not arouse her, even a touch
I hissed the early seagulls and the sailor
After a momentary repose she winked
At me, and smiled, and tossed about
And I saw her new wrinkles creased
Gently waved zephyr prostrated before her
For nourishing a hope to avoid the marine crisis
Oh! Let not tears drip to avoid the fair countenance
I caress her hoary hair gilt by the early sunshine
Her face stark sober down, she looked so strong
A Couple in Their
Colloquy
Uh? Do you know when we lost our hearts to each other?
I don't get it. Time flies rapidly with me far away!
So, where are you in the meantime?
Probably I am just in your first white hair.
No wonder we seem so close to each other.
Now I feel you are in my first wrinkle.
What makes us to see so little when we're sticking together?
At a price of tough time, time and tide wait for no lover.
Even if love is infinity, love is still in need...
What does it mean? Don't we love enough?
No! When you magnify love, it becomes a bottomless pit.
I say yes! When it becomes empty, it piles up as a mountain.
It's full of paradox; don't make a fool of me!
Love is as running a race for the prize in life that's true!
That is, especially when time keeps on consuming us.
What to do then? Do you work against time to conquer aging?
No! Just try going anticlockwise to meet our Creator.
Then, bide your time to ransom all your loss from Him?
No way, but I can trace where our lives and love came from!
A Lake in Grass Valley
(It is called Bowman Lake, high up on the South Fork of Yuba River.)
How marvelous the mountain topped with a lake,
a concentric circle around thicketed summit,
as a kettle on the tea board filled with drinking water.
With such abundant fresh fountainhead, why do I
never scoop up enough during my lifetime?
As a Samaritan woman, I cannot help but hold on
a canned juice to slake my thirst, and my heart
still thirstily awaits Jesus to fill up my empty
inmost well with His grace, mercy, and living water.
As the immense aqua lake, men craving for wealth
to maximum, forget the flood that devoured
the whole world except the family of Noah
with beloved pairing creatures survived only in the Ark.
If the fish underneath the lake reminiscing the story
of the flood, it might testify for the token of rainbow
that bridged a gap of rage with infinite love,
as the mountain topped with a vast lake water...
A park in San Jose
A park in San Jose I roamed, roved and rambled
for many time, and coincided with a grizzly bird
around the pond and rivulet in the early morn.
We both left when other guys and birds crowded in.
The bird always stared at me, and hopped after me.
We both imperturbably stood, face to face.
Our impalpable ken met, and interacted each other.
I thought with a bird thinking, and the bird mine.
Beyond the skies, I flew upon an azure vault.
I saw the world through the bird’s dilated pupils.
The constricted size of people squirming as worms,
but in the bird’s ears their brutish mutter aggravating.
The globe wrapped in a filthy shawl of wholesome inventions.
The wit of people wrenched themselves like sitting ducks,
and penned themselves by the excessive pretexts of liberal.
Not the least excelled the birds on every respect.
Haply and mirthfully, I swooped down upon the park bower.
The bird was besieged with feeding popcorn from visitors.
Save a lost albatross! They shouted generously,
but the bird averted my eyes, and I became odious to it.
A Time Bomb in My Body
Last tough year finally end off very specially.
I spent the hectic Christmas Eve at the sickbed.
The cardiologist was unique Santa Claus.
He showed me a picture of my coronary arteries
as a Christmas gift of cardiac catheterization.
Two of them that might lead to the prosperity
and the macrobiotic life I used to pursue,
have been blocked half a vessel unwillingly.
Only an artery is as smooth as a blood highway
that is an outlet for the love of God.
Now I am recuperating and recalling in the new year:
A tube as if a flexile reed had passed through
my blood vessel from an elbow to my inner heart,
and injected fluorescent photograph developer
that almost burnt away my whole body.
Suddenly, I felt a Satanic time bomb being lurked
in my inward organs that can be triggered
whenever God is not on patrol shuttling to and fro
along with His love and mercy on my blood highway.
Homelessness
Home of the sweetest homes,
it has been so warm and cozy
when I was going cold all over.
Not that you never heard my quiver,
but there erected a big wall
walled off from your heart.
I'd rather to be poverty-stricken
than well-to-do in a cage.
I don't like to knock your door.
Being rich in material, poor in spirit,
your life has been decoded
as a digital chart on the Wall Street.
I've always been hungry and cold,
but not cold as charity toward you.
My heart could be for your recreation
where my heavenly Father has
started to rebuild His furnace
with the fuel of love to heat
throughout the blessing world!
In A Specific
Mother's Day
Ninety years fitted her life to perfection,
fit as a fiddle, she has been,
but not at the peak of her age.
My mother is still able to thread a needle
precisely, steadily and fast.
She peeps through the blinds and laughs at me
to see my mouth being wrapped in a leaf.
I have a blind guess, behind the window,
about her mind, which I cannot guess
she is vivid or dull? I guess--
I guess, she is not an Alzheimer’s patient
as the doctor diagnosed.
From separating by the vast ocean,
She still cares for me and shares with me
in the grace and love of God.
Her tender voice as a faint breeze,
Her smile as a night-blooming cereus,
She watches and talks with me in a daydream.
She has never known where her son is
since the doctor has found her symptom.
I warmed to her ninety years phantasm!
Mississippi Embraced
New Orleans is special, like a spoilt child
Being harbored by Mississippi so well
With her swarthy arms embraced
And her muddy face smiled in weal
The vast, thick and dense water overlaid
With equivalent fondness and marvel
On her way home Mississippi shuffled
Prudently soothing barges and soil
As an aged mother Mississippi still murmured
The legends of French Quarter and Cajun as well
Nestling into the gulf, she never reminisced
A venture of Twain that others will thrill
Since New Orleans has much trouble increased
Gigantic water gates and pumps to quell
The rainstorm, lest St. John overflowed
But how is the underground canal?
No matter New Orleans never be a docile child
Two huge iron bridges rode astride her throttle
A long ridge way squeezed her artery of blood
Mississippi has always rejoiced as the vernal gale
| Samples
of my biblical poetry and essay
My Chinese Biblical Literature English/Chinese bilingual writer:Peper K. Y. Chang : [email protected] Copyright © 2003 Peter K. Y. Chang . All Rights Reserved 
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