Early poems (pre-2015)
Early poems written before 2015 by Mingji Liu.
March 2014
Pre-2015 · Mingji Liu
I love the smell of walking across campus after a spot of light rain.
That smoky, ochre aroma of forgotten earth.
Like opening the spice cupboard on a slow, overcast day.
Glass Revisited
Pre-2015 · Mingji Liu
It tastes like nothing.
Sand grinding down to slivers
Between the wheels of your two front teeth.
Till it leaves a sticky dry suck
Upon the root of your tongue.
I am here.
Alone in the flicker
Of a projector’s night;
So I ask you this –
When all those hollow stalks
Stare shamelessly
At a tapestry of painted hills,
While all our seasons shiver
And slide into rickets and shingle.
Do you want to lie there?
Along a facade of broken glass
Where the wind brings only
The coil of salt brine
To your bloodied nose?
The prickling of shards against
Your cheek?
Or shall I sit
In this shouldered night
And count pollen grains
Spilled under
The cathodoluminescence.
V dome poveshennovo ne govorat o veryovke.*
I guess I should’ve remembered that.
*Russian proverb: In the house of a hanged man one never speaks of ropes.
Monotone Hazard Rate Condition
Pre-2015 · Mingji Liu
When the first volley of near-Earth asteroids puncture the mid-Atlantic
we will be walking towards that crown of pines where we made love
on the red and orange grids of the Torino Scale in a kinetic bombardment of
rapid heartbeats as we unwrap the picnic basket and hold close
the calderas throttling the sky with mass ejections of volcanic ash
and awkward fumbles as our arms and lips and clothes twine and untwine
across the Earth in a slow funereal march of ekpyrotic flood basalt
all the while wondering what secrets the other had packed in
those high-energy collisions creating false vacuum metastability events
which made us wary that our nakedness was not entirely our own despite
the conversion of the world into a degenerate soup of lifeless quark matter
till in the end we both felt like we’d rather have someone else watching.
Mountain
Pre-2015 · Mingji Liu
Did you know that
the mountain remembers when it was fish?
No. I’m not joking.
I’ve actually seen it.
I’ve seen the ocean frozen in the cliff face.
I’ve seen prehistoric sea shells embedded in the sandstone,
the outline of sea worms etched into boulders.
A graveyard of fish bones, their bodies suspended saint-like in prosaic rock.
I’ve seen it, like beads of memory ossified on the mountainside.
So I’m telling you
– the mountain remembers when it was fish!
– it remembers when it was the sea!
And it’s not just mountains that remember.
Everything has memory. Everything.
The forest remembers when it was the seed.
The sky remembers when it was the earth.
The ember remembers when it was fire!
Everything has memory. Everything.
But do you?
Do you still remember who I am?
Can you still remember me?
My skin, and my voice, and my flesh
– locked in sandstone, frozen in the cliff face.
Tell me you still remember…
Tell me you still remember the days and the nights, and the nights and the months. Tell me you still remember the wind on the dunes, and the warmth of the sky on our faces
– and even when it was dark, even when it was oh so dark, you could still feel that warmth pulsing out at sea and taste the sea salt, as intangible as the passage of time, between our lips
Tell me you still remember me! Tell me, before I am drowned at sea, before I am squeezed, like a lump of earth, between tectonic plates. Before I am forced, inch by fucking inch, into the screaming sun till I stand here screaming
Screaming on a mountain peak with the fossils of dead fish chiseled in my bones.
I promised you that I would show you the mountains.
I promised you that I would show you the fossils in the cliff face.
Why didn’t we go?
Why didn’t I take you?
I promised you I would…
I guess I must have forgotten.
mufti day
Pre-2015 · Mingji Liu
wednesday:
culture week
bring a plate.
Nacre
Pre-2015 · Mingji Liu
We sat under the shade of the moon – You and I
Under the willow tree and the yellow grass
Passing honey between our fingertips
You whispered to me
Of memories and of
time and time enough
And I felt the grass breathe
against the contours of your chest
And the salt taste of your stubble
And safe under that dark glow of leaves
Wrapped inside our mother-of-pearl
I felt the dew trickle through the valley between my breasts
And I smelt the buttermilk smell of your semen on my thighs
And I tried to whisper back
But I was silent
I am as the lovers, who made the universe entire
I am as the tyrants, who sit upon their thrones of dirt
I am as the waves that crest like bone and sinew
And are dashed against the shoreline
Dashed till they are nothing but foam and dust
So I caught a tiny piece of it
A dust mote of time
A droplet of You and I
And I held it close, like a child against my breasts
My memory, my treasure
Of you
I lathered it in mother-of-pearl
Coated it with iridescence
Washed it in the colour-play of bodies
And I prayed that it would grow
That it would do something
Anything
And now all I have is just this sorry dust seeping through my fingers
These wrinkles seeping through the holes in my hands
And I feel old and I feel tired
Like a voice speaking into nothing
I am as the tyrants, who made their universe entire
I am as the lovers, who sit upon their thrones of dirt
Wading through this mockery of times,
This heat death of seasons
Dashing against the shoreline,
Dashing against my breasts
And now I know what I am afraid of
Time and time enough you said
Time and time enough.
Neighbours
Pre-2015 · Mingji Liu
when I was seven and you were nine
you told me that Waltzing Matilda was the national anthem of Australia
you told me that paper cuts were as poisonous as snake bites
and that human brains were the same colour as egg whites
and you once even told me orange juice tasted
better after you brushed your teeth
that one was definitely a lie.
we lived in a cheap part of town, You and I
where the man upstairs would bike shirtless to work
and the family downstairs punctuated their evenings
with the sound of broken dinner plates.
but the neighbourhood was still ours for the taking
like that time we found that old pogo stick
and when we tried to use it
instead of bouncing like kangaroos
the only thing we achieved was the sound of bloody knees
crunching against concrete.
or that time you threw rocks at the ducks
as though you were some grenadier striking fear into the heart of the enemy
and when I told you that the ducks didn’t like it
you told me that you were saving all of mankind!
because the ducks secretly thought they were dinosaurs
that deep down in their heart and in their flesh and in their feathers
ducks secretly knew they were velociraptors.
and then suddenly one night your mother’s boyfriend
decided he could no longer stay
and so you moved out of town
with your mum and her boyfriend
to some place far away
but before you left
you gave me one final piece of advice
one final rant
‘hey,’ you said
‘wouldn’t it be really, really, really cool
if the entire world was an atom on the head of an ant?’
‘yeah’, I said, ‘that would pretty be cool’
and that was that
and you were gone
and now that I am no longer seven and you are no longer nine
the truth is we are no longer children anymore
the truth is some nights I sleep poorly
and the truth is some nights I can’t dream
and the truth is I’m ashamed of the cigarette stench
in my hair
and empty bottles
on my shelf
and if we were to meet again
I know that it would be like first contact
between Aztecs and Conquistadores
babbling at each other in barbarian tongues
but I also know that in end
in the very end
you were right!
because wouldn’t it be amazing if the entire world was an atom on the head of an ant!
wouldn’t it be amazing if Waltzing Matilda was the national anthem of Australia!
and wouldn’t it actually be amazing if orange juice actually
tasted better after brushing your teeth!
and I know
that somewhere,
somewhere out there
are ducks that still think
they are dinosaurs.
Prometheus Blues
Pre-2015 · Mingji Liu
A rhyme or two cannot go wrong,
Except when forced, then they pong.
And meter’s good, prosody’s nice.
Though twist’d are some they won’t suffice.
Cultural allusions are fine too,
But O Prometheus! We’d have no clue.
I ‘d like a poem that’s well-crafted
instead of
this
kind
of wanky shit
that’s quite
re-
tarded
‘Tis sad this age. But we all know it,
You either suck or you’re a starving poet.
Sonnet I
Pre-2015 · Mingji Liu
On consumption and waste.
Doth milk taste sweeter and more mild when thrown
Into the seas? Doth fish fry better for
The child when carp skin fills the store?
Sleep not thou skipper that wastes scale or bone.
If scratch’d fruits one discards and fair ones shown
And sold - what of families both cold and poor?
Are they warm’d by gas fires burning offshore?
Sorry souls are we who find this unknown.
Cursed the wastrels who control the cent;
Cursed am I with grain that spills the plate,
For this rot by my hands denies twenty
Maws and twenty more tonight will have spent
A meal of dust. The vision comes too late:
We live upon a wasteland of plenty.
Sonnet II
Pre-2015 · Mingji Liu
Dear mistress! Dear friend!
Dear mistress! Dear friend! I speak from lowly
State to you who are high in eye and heart.
One curl, one wisp and my soul does depart.
You art poor in poorness and holy
Angelic choirs wither when in boldly
Grace your candle-voice speaks. A sinning dart
You take and into good turn double-smart.
But for all my joy I feel a coldly
Shoulder from you! Perhaps I am over
Enthus’d. But then I must ask: Can one be
Too happy with the sun? Or with the day
Risen dew? If your friends do laugh then spur
Me by god! But with a smile hear this plea,
And know that you still light my darkling way.
Sonnet III
Pre-2015 · Mingji Liu
A lighthouse in the darkness
When I cage infinity in one hand
And Republic’s dawn brings the black thorn’d Rose,
When we stand before the deluge and pose
‘Gainst the reel of this home – Our barren land –
I fear to lose your voice in burning sand
So deep no clarion call could compose
A soul within those storms. So grim, the holds
Of wax would cast your candle to the damn’d.
In darkness a ship is lost. Her captain
Falls without the light. In daytime our tight
Hearts darken with the hawk blur, the colt speed
Of a modern hour. But I am certain
Rapture is here! I see her tall and bright!
For only you are my beacon, my lead.
The eagles
Pre-2015 · Mingji Liu
And have you also wished
the feathers
to burst from your skin?
I know that this is
all I ever wanted for you.
For you
to soar high
above the spine of the earth,
a cresting wave of bone and talon
above the pine and cold mountain rock.
For you
to rise from water
in raw and torsional form,
with pink salmon flesh caught
like tallow between your claws.
It’s true –
I am delusional
to yearn for this
infinite and joyful
gift to you.
But why deny you the birds?
Why deny you the clouds?
I wish the child
crushing stray acorns with the
root of his heels
finds music
in every footfall.
I wish the girl down the street,
with her candle jars and vinyl tracks,
converts everyone to veganism
with her awkward
waning smile.
And I wish you could
lie next to me again,
and tell me all your little stories:
Like the time you swallowed
shampoo on a
five dollar bet.
Or the time you danced
against the half-lit street art in
Berlin.
Or the time you
collected
a hundred cicada shells
and glued them
to your windowsill.
Instead of just the sad stories.
Instead of just the lonely stories.
Like the time the doctors said
your muscles wouldn’t grow.
Or the time you cycled into a car door.
Or the time the sun hurt you so badly
your skin became snow flaked
and a hundred hot volts of electricity
pierced your shoulders.
I guess
that’s all I really wanted -
to have been there and listened,
and wished you into an eagle.
Wishing and wishing,
till everyone I know takes flight
into the frozen air,
tracing fingers along the cloud banks,
washed in the colour play of their feathers.
But the truth is -
even if I stopped,
somewhere out there,
colonies of birds are screeching through the sky,
colonies of birds are finding homes tonight.
While I’ll still be here,
with the sparrows circling
the bread crumbs in front of me.