Selected poems
Enjoying myself alone, if only for once
Racing along the Shenyang-Hainan Island Freeway alone
Going across the Hangzhou Bay alone
Playing amidst the Zhoushan Archipelago alone
Staying in a mountain village alone
Occupying a presidential suite alone
Lying across a queen-size bed two metres wide, alone
Rolling this way and that
I could sleep whichever way I liked
I'd fought and rolled all my life
But had never done that
This way
Enjoying a private room alone
Using eight dinner sets alone
Ordering ten courses alone
Drinking three hundred glasses alone
Eating and drinking alone
Accompanied by three girls
Who poured tea for me, opened the bottles, replaced plates and pulled open the
curtains
And on a full stomach
I went to the KTV on the top floor
Just enjoying myself, if only for once
For such enjoyments could pull off
The GDP
Of a place
Wanting to throw tantrums
A horse
Runs into a café
Scaring the customers away —
Is that an English horse
Or an Italian or French one?
Don't remember
All I can remember is that when I was a teenager
I'd often make trouble
Smashing this family's water vat
Or that family's window
Bullying the wheat and the rape
Uncle chided me, saying:
You are like a horny bull, running wild everywhere!
Now, I'm no longer horny
Occasionally, though, I dream of becoming a president
And if I become one
I can throw tantrums at random
Horse tantrums and bull tantrums
Or even donkey tantrums
If I don't like someone
I can rear
And throw him
Off my back
This city
This city
Overlapping
Towards the clouds towards the sea
This city
Its top levels very, very high
The highest reaching paradise
This city
Its bottom levels very, very low
The lowest deep into hell
This city
Is a huge ant nest
Crawling everywhere gnawing everywhere
Burrowing in and out
Of everywhere
This is a city of mixed overlappings
Gold and bricks steel muscles and bones
Beauties and animals —
Flowers of the day rubbish of the night
Pleasure and tears
All flushed into the sewage
By the toilets
River waters and shares
Market quotations and the sea level all rising!
And my heart
Has been sinking with this city
Only half an hour allowed
The Qinghai-Tibet Plateau
Allows only
Half
An hour
Mother
Allows
Only half
An hour
Wolves
Tibetan blue bears
Ravens
Only
Allow
Half an hour
Must
Stand
Up
Within half an hour
Straight after birth
And immediately
Find one's own mother
Follow her
Covering 500 kilometres
Before reaching
The mysterious
World
The Qinghai-Tibet Plateau
Only
Allows the small Tibetan antelope
Half
An hour
A strange condition
His old classmate, while drinking, said that he was suffering from a strange condition
Often talking to his dead wife in his dreams
Waking his current wife up with a fright
His current wife said that he'd got a condition
But the doctor couldn't find out the cause
On one occasion, he was fighting with someone in a dream
And kicked his wife off the bed
On several other occasions,