Somewhere, ocean punctures

Horizon– a water-born beast. 

Somewhere, a son 

Crouches, dirt-traced hands reaching

For his father’s pants leg. 

起

And so the story

Begins. They replace sunbeam

With the ash-clotted glint of guns,

Rendering it holy. Spear tips angled

Towards the earth’s throat. An age old

Practice: Men molded from violence,

Steered towards the hunger

In each other’s eyes. Man folds home

Into his back pocket, his child’s cries

Darkening the skyline. 

承

He retreats into the fissures 

Between his fingers, man-made pride

splintering in the minefield. He tries to find

God between stumbling feet, 

In the rifle barrels bared like

Teeth. Maybe if he worshipped destruction,

offered bomb-branded flesh

As sacrifice. From afar, 

He watches moon crush

Metal. 

轉

Paper cranes in the wind, weightless

As a dirge. Son folds birdsong

Into paper corners, hurtling into smog.

Homemade bullets. Man cannot find light

In his blade’s reflection. There is

So much darkness in these bodies. Man runs,

The copper-streaked twilight

Out of reach. Painted limbs. Blood-bellied

Machine. He wants to write a letter

Home. 

合

Somewhere a tide falls, 

Shatters itself into a million clean-cut

Bones.

Somewhere a father curls prayer-stained fingers

Into red marsh and surrenders

To a godless land. He wonders where he begins

And where the rust-rimmed bullet ends. 

1 起承轉合 The structure of a composition: beginning(起), action(承), twist (轉)and conclusion(合)