Why Rely on the Fictitious

Smoke disperses
Night has fallen
Violet Alice
Holds out two hands from the black velvet
Pastoral is getting old-fashioned
We’re tied up by utterances
Growing more clueless day by day
How to make ourselves transparent you said
There is one whole world out there yet we
Turn around to face the inside

Cat sneaking along the vertical edge
Rose of pain withers away day by day
Just a puff like this will do?
When we’re still searching for the right word
Like shaving our sideburns clean with a razor
Hoping in vain not to be bothered

Another moment of delay and the rose will be forgotten
Prickles will be snatched away too; that’s
An ancient conclusion.
Who can remember our sword
Is indeed our own bodies? We’ve forgotten
The world is a necessary shield:
“Regard all the agitations and pains honestly
Light and darkness deep inside the body and in every corner
Of the world…”

Are we still wrestling with the meaning of words
Wishing they would stay further away from us
Rebel only with our springlike attire
As we follow the cautious instructions
Dressed in colorful layers of clothes streaming
Shy away from debates
Lay our skeleton out for others to scrutinize
Without stating our view
Stay happy with the encyclopedia series hawked to us

The island is crashed, the shore tossing
Delicate bows on our tongues appear way too quiet in the tumult
Knives and forks, candlesticks, table manners.
How should we describe the cracks in the houses?
Squashed bodies, juice gurgling out
Is rhetoric still needed
To trim all these into smooth nails
Click-clack, click-clack, and they’re cut away
Deny having witnessed fragility
We are poor – not because of our income

Is innovative belief more dangerous than

A hypocritical spring?
If we return all our papers to them
Let our grammar stand on the opposite of theirs
Repudiate regulations
That transform into irregular butterflies
Fling their coins at them with a clatter
Dump the shadow and thesis imposed on us
No longer sit with knees together
Betray eternity
Our utterances shall then tangle
Unnamed darkness falls
We become infants, refuse to be raised
Reassign parents to ourselves
Smash all conjunctions into pieces with our screams
Learn to make unprecedented gestures (inevitably odd)
Arms around each other’s shoulders, naked as if emerging from fire
Will this anchorless drifting
Find that unique rose of ours deep under the sea
As a testimony to our meticulous shore

Note: “Economic development is the eternal theme of Hong Kong.” -- Zeng Qinghong, Vice-President of the People’s Republic of China, 27th April, 2004.