Footsteps On The Staircase.

Hearing footsteps on the staircase
a young boy is silent in his room,
only moonlight from the window
brightens the darkness and gloom.
His heart beats fast, fear increases
as an angry father opens the door,
staggering drunkenly towards him
to inflict violent cruelty once more.

Join the ice cream army, as they head off to the coast
In the stationary traffic, they sit there and they roast
By the time that they arrive, the day is nearly done
Join the ice cream army as they race to catch some sun

Join the ice cream army, sitting safely on the sands
Lazing in their deckchairs with their sundaes in their hands
Basking in the sunshine, laying like they’re dead
See the ice cream army, watch them all turn red

poets are intuitive creatures,
we don't even know some of the things
we know,
twittering in the trees
with manifestos of silence,
bombing the inner plane
with
unrecognized faces
and telling stories of the
yet-to-come.

somehow
we make sense
of the senseless, find the abiding spirit in the
soulless,
write poems of the undiscovered land
until our days of (the rising) sun
are done.

~~~~~~~~~~

A translation of a segment of Zhu Yufu's poem:

"It’s time

grids
laid like a weavers magic
there are lines of us
reaching up
and arms across
tabletops and bedsheets
sands of summer
warmed with bitter blue haze

and storm fed skies
fat with dusk and thunderheads
dancing with light

and tonight in the ghost of
lonliness I chase the old
songs of us
around we go dipping into sunshine
and cool shade

a forest trail walk we talk
in heady pine fallow carpets
and dusty wind
Tannic falls gathering its voice