i am a sick man from asia

living listlessly in the last days of the twentieth century

in a country that cannot do anything about my disease

but keeps saying: what do you expect from us doctors

we are not gods

we can't promise you'll get better when you see us

there's nothing much you can do about it

no medicine no cure no remedies except perhaps money

all you do is wait

until it cures itself

i am a sick man from asia

i have been sick ever since they cut off my ancestral roots

in revolution after revolution

introduced from the west

which in our terminology means death

i'm sitting here with a blocked nose

that refuses to take in the fresh air of ideas

a sore throat that saws through the night of post-love and sex

a mouth containing the world's ugliest teeth

that always attract

the intensest gaze

(i wonder why they never come to me to collect these

for archaelogical samples

is it because i'm not sick enough)

i have songs to sing although i have not the language

songs sick and sad a bit silly but not sissy

my heart out of order

like an elevator poised mid-air

my eyes so itchy and red

they need more scratching than i feel necessary

my songs are wicked songs of a man sick with everything

who has lost his original voice

has not gained a new one and is finding one

in his arse and possibly in the head of his penis

i mean where the pen is

Published in Songs of the Last Chinese Poet (Wild Peony, 1997).