Poems by Michael

The poem above was written about two months prior to Aaron’s birth. I was about to become a father. Besides anxiety, I felt a lot of emotions in remembering my own father, the intriguing three-kingdom stories that he had told of me, the little arithmetical table he had made for me of pine wood, and the basic GO chess techniques that he had taught me… More vividly, the bravery and great perseverance that he had shown during his own fight against a vicious type of brain cancer, of which he eventually and unfortunately died when I was 8.

This one is a bit different. I wrote it at the hotel after a nice evening stroll around the famous Victory Harbor of Hong Kong. I was there on a business trip in 2007 (or 2008?) It has a sense of aggression and yet is not too provocative. It may read like an informal idealism originated from a military setting of the old times... I don’t really remember why I wrote such a piece while laying on the sofa in the suite where I stayed. Might be the “Bloody Mary” drunk at dinner…

The poem on the left belongs to a category called "CI" in the Chinese poetry system. I wrote it while I was visiting Taiwan, for the first time in my life. The older generation in my family used to have a vague tie with those folks who fled to that island about half a century ago, since when the Mainland and Taiwan have been ruled by two different political powers, and the two peoples have led very different lives (till recently).