SOME SAMPLE POEMS*

by Kuo-Pen Yung

Somehow to promote Chi Tao

 

My Goods Are On Sale
(To My First Class in America)

I was invited here to teach you the practice of taichi,
now I’d teach you also chikung as an additional practice.
Because chikung is easier for you to learn than taichi,
it can more rapidly raise your energy and spirit, or chi.

I’d like to compare this class with an analogy,
as if I am here to sell things for a better life.
All my goods are necessities of high quality,
but they are put on sale at a very low price.

You come to my shop intend to buy a shirt;
I offer to sell you also a suit -- for free.
Because the suit is more useful to you;
moreover, it’s very valuable to me.

 

At the beginning of each day’s teaching,
to my taichi students I usually would say:
“Health to you, happiness to you, my friends,  
Let us learn the way, and enjoy it as we may.”

Only when we are healthy may we be happy;
yet health can be further increased by happiness. 
The two are essential elements for all human race;
without them human life would be extremely hapless.

To my chikung students I would usually say
some more explicative words every day:
“Vigor and wisdom, ease and peace,
beauty and bliss to you, I pray.”

If a person is without reasonable wisdom,   
he/she cannot be a desirable character.
If a person is without necessary vigor,
he/she can only be a miserable quitter.

Vigor can make people powerful.
Wisdom can make us successful.
Beauty can make you happy and amiable. 
Peace can make us more easeful and blissful.

Both the two practices and their virtues
have relative benefits and deductive effects.
They can improve human character and behavior,
can cure our personal and social silliness and sinfulness.

The practices are the precious heritage of human creations.
Their virtues are priceless treasures of heavenly natures.
Yet, they must be voluntarily learned and personally acquired,
should be rooted in all societies and spread to all nations.

Now, let us learn and practice chikung and taichi,
acquire and spread their benefits all together.
So to make us happier, healthier, wiser and wealthier;
universally easeful, peaceful, and blissful forever.

 

My goods are now here on sale.
I welcome everyone. Come to purchase from me!
You just enter and pay attention;
then you’ll have a worthy, hearty shopping spree.

Today you gain the benefits from my class,
tomorrow you shall share them with others;
so that we can spread health and happiness,
all over the world -- to everyone on earth.

Do not suppose you’ll undertake a failing business,
your capital and interest will fly away on wings; 
so that you would have to sustain your life
with northeast rain and northwest wind.

Knowledge is a strange kind of merchandise,
it can’t be over sold or completely dispensed.            
The more you sell it or hand it out,
the more it’ll feedback and remain.   

Remember, you will obtain from my lessons,
an enlivened body, enlightened mind, and exalted spirit.    
Anyone who is outfitted with such elements,
can surely live better, reach higher, even make miracles!

When you can be sowers and givers;
then you may be reapers and receivers.
As chikung and taichi’s teachers and preachers,
You’ll be wealthy as billionaires, healthy as cheerleaders. 

 

**                  **                  **

 

Can’t You Find Another Method?

Can’t you find another method?
Or change to another form?
A method which is mild.
Form that does no harm!

Like nature.
According to it.
Along with nature,  
But not against it.

For heaven’s sake!
Or really for the people.
Be merciful.
Be peaceable! 

You revolutionaries!
You ravagers!!
You liberators!
You liquidators!!

You mass movers!
Mass murderers!!
You new rulers!
Wrongdoers!!

 

**                  **                  **

 

For Children’s Sake
Stop It!

You say you are just.
He says he is just.
Who is?
Who knows?

For justice’s sake
You fight?
For justice’s sake
Fight no more!

For women’s sake,
Cease fire! 
For children’s sake,
Cease fire forever! 

For the sake of your wife.
For the sake of your mother.
For the sake of your children.
For the sake of all others’!

Those kindly women, poor women.
Those lovely children, miserable children.
Don’t let them weep in sackcloth, in ashes.
Don’t make them homeless, parentless.

You nationalists!
You narcissists!!
You racists!
You rapists!!

You warlords!
You’re war horses!!
You soldiers!
You’re stupid swords!!

 

**                  **                  **

Albert’s Law *

This is not a laughing matter or love song.
The traditional Murphy’s Law proclaims,
“If anything can go wrong, will go wrong.”
It has the worst influence on human race.

Its power is much like a merciless monster,
permanently shadows people with its paw.
I suggest we’d better get rid of it forever,
and replace it with a most nice law.

“If anything can go right,
 WILL GO RIGHT!!!”
Only one word is changed,
influence veers to the best side.

 

Actually this is not a new notion,
but no one formally mentions it.
For its registration and promotion,
we must name and christen it.

Here is an able-bodied Albert
who formally mentions it now;
thus I think we’d better register
and call it the Albert’s Law.

Murphy originally was an engineer
in a laboratory of NASA.
His law came from an experiment
of clash force in space age.

All the wise and unwise people
accepted it as an absolute truth.
Actually it’s a poisonous pill
can hurt human’s all growth.

Albert presently is a poetaster
in a penthouse/basement of PWWA.
His law comes from patting/rubbing
his half bald head and hard brazen face.

All his fancy, funny, feverish fellow poets
accept it as a premium, precious thing.
They imagine it’s a miracle potion
can cure their sour, sore being.

 

Negative thinking can lead to
only negative consequence.
Murphy’s law can bring us
only pain and sadness.

Positive thinking can lead to
all positive consequence.
Albert’s law can bring us
all pleasure and happiness.

Let’s boot that bad, old,
bitter, foul, Murphy’s Law.
Drive it out of our mind!

Let’s meet this fresh, great,
pretty, sweet, Albert’s Law.
Liven up all our might!

Anything can be right,
anyway will be right!
May this sexy law
bring us sun light?

Hail! Albert’s law!
Let’s laugh loud!

 

* The 2003 Ig Nobel Prize winners were announced and awarded at Harvard’s Sanders Theater on the evening of October 2. The Engineering Prize went to the late John Paul Stapp, the late Edward A. Murphy, Jr., and George Nichols, for jointly giving birth in 1949 to Murphy's Law.

This news stimulated me to rewrite this poem, to praise the award, but reprobate the law.

 

  

* Copyrights of all the poems in this site open to the whole world

* To be continued on Chi Tao Poems-2