Jung-Blake Double Talk

The Tales of Hoffmann was shown at the Rubin Museum as part of Jungian movie series during the display of Carl Jung’s Red Book.  The recoloring by Technicolor makes the high handed intellectual construct of the movie version of the Opera story even more over the top. Lack of happiness, after all, can be the creative source.

Went to see William Blake exhibition with a engineer-turned-poet-turned-power house young media executive-turned-big time tech executive friend. Blake never traveled far from his home town.  What happened to “万卷书，千里路”.  Maybe all enlightenment and salvation is in our dreams?  BTW, Morgan library did not do a good job with the Blake show. A disappointment.

Blake-Jung connection may only exist in my mind (and of course my dreams)

Skipped Home

That night
My heart skipped a beat

The band, a jazz 3 piece
A drum, a piano, and a bass
Devil with a smile
Rolls ‘n rolls, Emptiness
The rolling of tune, of rhythm, of melodies

The drum skipped a beat
Yes it was jazz band
Acoustic instruments, analogue on vinyl
Or was it digital
They rolled ‘n rolled
Smile of the devil

The piano skipped a beat,
The drum stood by
The base played the long haired guy
He couldn’t sing with all that rye
The other two were bold, they skipped him over
As the base plays long haired guy

My heart, oh my heart
It’s probably from my mother
It skipped a beat,
two,
maybe five
The beat went rolling, rolling
evaporating in the air
with the melody ‘n despair
It is my mother
It is my father
It is my homeland that I really never wanted
Oh, Come to think of it, it chose me square
If I could only skip that land, let childhood rolls with flair
If I could only skip heart beats here and there
To die and to relive without fan fair
It only I could jazz…

Why am I here, West Village Manhattan
The home of the homeless
Why am I rolling with the rolling of tunes, of rhythms, of melodies
This heart of mine
This void that use to be a meaty bloody heart
It slipped itself as it rolled with the guys,
The guys, played by the drum, the piano, and the base

“It doesn’t matter how you fall
Only matters how you land”
Home at last

“You only live once
Not even then”
Home at last

“Broken heart is like hemorrhoid
Sooner or later every ass hole gets one”
Home at last

“What goes up
will eventually come down”
Home at last

Thank Earth and Heaven
I’m home at last

History’s Hang-Over – on the 20th anniversary of Tiananmen Massacre

by Shen Tong

The Party

We were rocks rolling into the early summer
Tiananmen Square was built around us with flair
Freedom grabbed spring for a love affair

We stripped ourselves bare
Our excited voices turned higher
Our fists clinched tighter

We came
we dreamed in exhaustion

by the next year
there would only be spring here

Dreams are intoxicating
Even rolling rocks got drunk

The rolling rocks stopped rolling
The rest …

is history’s hang-over

The Farewell

Street led roaring trucks into Beijing
Ignorance consumed Marshall Law soldiers
Tanks reconstructed pavement in a trance
Bullets invited young bodies for a dance

The color of blood
The sound of gunfire
The burning buses and cars

The party was a hit
But we were the uninvited guests
Our pride was our last stands
“Somebody had to stop” the party at once

The rolling rocks were acquiring moss
The rest …

is history’s hang-over

The Hang-over

Everybody got their 15 minutes then got sober
People waited in line even after the party was over
Anyone who was not there claimed ancient ties to the dreamer.
And the host was embarrassed
They classified the party as an urban legend

The scary kind, you can only whisper about
Not talking about it at all would be better

Let bygones be gone
Let trauma to be frozen and suppressed
Let’s chant a thousand times over

“we are better off with the massacre”.

Spring came, and spring went, time got wise and clever

Freedom hoped
Freedom insisted
Freedom did not overcome

The fling with spring is too inconvenient to remember
Everyone is now a practical philosopher
Why make love,

when one can make money big and make war bigger

The rolling rocks are covered with moss
The rest …

is history’s hang-over

© copyright, Shen Tong 2009

Exile

Coming from Hope.

Going to Hope

Adrift upon a sea of hope.

Looking back on the mists of home,

on the shasow eyes

and half-turned smiles

on waves and waves of time

Time sings to me:

“The boundless sea

becomes the field you plant upon.”

The song becomes a poem

I store safely in my truncks