12
Around this time
Someone starts humming a cradle song
Like a streak of water spreading on paper

A light rain starts falling
Like powdery snow floating down
There are tiny sounds like rice grains
Within those sounds
I become small
I change into an infant

Sucking milk
Reveling in the milky smell
Like lying in balls of cotton
Getting a tickly feeling

Hey
Wake up
This is the bathroom
You drunk!

11
Fire slowly reaches into water
Water bites its finger
The finger is gone

I am beneath a traffic light
Waiting for a single sentence
The light goes out
I am gone

That sentence was like an alley lined with food stalls
In the dark of night
I’ve lost sight of it

10
All of them gone
The hand that was right at hand a moment ago
The crowd of onlookers that gathered around

A farmer looks at the tip of his nose
Tells the story of a serf’s life
Gets so caught up with the story that it’s about himself

The city is like a pencil drawing
Erased until it lies in shreds
Here are diaper cloths and there some banners
With a hangdog look

Right after taking off a plane droops down
With a sinking drone
Water surface smashed
Lamplight smashed
An orphan comes into this world

Get drunk once again
Raise my hand in surrender
Raise my hand to hit someone
Raise my hand to catch the electricity
Raise my hand for a caress

We who are in the mirror

In the mirror looking in the mirror
Sprucing up my skull
Rolling my stiff eyeballs
Making the whole room spin with them

It’s as if there are four of me
Around a mahjong table
Between the circle suit and the bamboo suit
You have to go through a wan* 

Mahjong has won the game
The mirror is broken
The four of us are gone

           [* Note: A pun which means both the “character suit” in mahjong
                          and “ten thousand (yuan)” ]

9
Wash my hands
Keep on washing them
Dry them and wash again
Dry again
Wash again
Wash my hands into infant’s hands
I can never wash them clean
I’m afraid
I break out crying
I don’t dare shake hands
Don’t dare to touch my left hand with my right

The master of the left has not come
The left one does not belong to me

Wash my hands wash my underpants
Wash the night sky
Wash my countenance until it’s like daylight
Like a soap bubble
Carried on the wind

It goes on a journey
Drifts past the television tower
Into a television serial

There is nothing in the first episode
Just a pair of gloves
Not until episode 100
Does a pair of hands appear

8
Be a nice clean person
Crop the hair from your head
Pluck eyebrows, beard, underarms and pubic hair
Pull out your fingernails
Cleanse excretions from ears, nose and corners of eyes
Urinate, defecate, ejaculate
Remove clothing
Lay down
Do not eat or drink
Don’t think or look
Don’t say anything

This office tower is tilting infinitesimally
The night is making small movements
No movements by the people inside

7
Bridge that straddles the river
Is a grand ideograph, unsimplified

A bat dives from the bridge
At the moment of hitting bottom
It flies up in the air

It has an old man’s face
A pair of leper’s hands

It dives from the bridge again
At the moment of hitting bottom
Up it flies again

It has a pair of infant’s eyes
A great-grandmother’s mouth

It dives from the bridge again
At the moment of hitting bottom
Up it flies again

It has ears like mine, and nose and teeth
It wraps its wings up tight like a fist
Dives down for the last time

On last year’s map a man fell to his death
Around that time
The radio in his pocket was squawking
First it played a snatch of rock music
Then it played a newscast
Then some advertisements
Then stock market reports

He sat on the railing
Turned the sound up loud
Then made a phone call to himself

Hello
Are you dead?

Mmm-hmm
I’m just about to die

6
Even when taking a piss, Li Bai was lyrical
A good thing that Liang and Zhu turned to butterflies
Otherwise love would have been imperfect…

When I was little I wanted to be a scientist
At fourteen I wanted to see a woman’s breasts
At sixteen my mind was on love
Now I only believe in breasts
Breasts from which the bra

Is unfastened
Plush softness
Candlelight
Stroke with your hands
You forget everything

5
“Me” imitates us
Channel One imitates Channel Two
Apartments imitate prisons
The internet imitates the world

The #1 machine shop produces monks like Sandy
#2 machine shop produces Master Tripitakas
Pigsies are defective rejects
I’ve become a high-performing stock
The Monkey King is heroin

Strictly forbidden, forbidden
Seeds of fire forbidden

4
Who is who
You are my Dad
Will always be my Dad
You are my Mom
Will always be my Mom

I will always be your son

The wish has crossed my mind
To be my own son

3
The avenue is deserted
On the outskirts a couple of leafy vegetables
   are having intercourse

Turn on the TV
An umbrella
Age: 34 years

A sound goes ka-thunk
It’s as white as a hospital

A hospital in mid-air
Looking like the moon
A gob of my sputum

(待续)