NEELI CHERKOVSKI

FOR DONG KINGMAN

     Yes, Dong, you remain a faded graph

      painted figures coming out of a fog bank

  on Montgomery Street in a watercolor from 1941

      ought to surprise no one       in the dirty air Pearl Harbor

you were chased

        for being “The Enemy,” but you were Hong Kong

Chinese, your pal picked up a block of wood

     and hit a guy over the head, then you both ran

down Hotaling Place… "I kicked the shit out of him

when he came up from around the corner,” 

          we were in the Li Po, Bobby Kaufman and me,

   in the Li Po Bar drinking 'em down, Bobby lived with me, I'd make

 dinner every night and usually had to throw it into the garbage

      as Bobby died and fell into the Bay, we said goodbye

        ash by ash from a box we held over his head, our little wind up rebel saint

                           with his Chinese mind, the black saint

from New Orleans, and those eloquent ladies

    who showed up just in time

       for so many more John F, Kennedy

      conspiracy theories, the sisters of our

poet who wrote, "o man in inner basement core

of me…" as if there was only one jazz club

     and as if this planet was Chinatown

down an alley of blood and guts

      the lights are low, there's Chinatown and there's

the angel, there's the ship of good luck

        and a harbor filled with death, a Chinese testament,

           a hopeful world, a need to be real

 a need for the ruckus to end --

                         little overt push for love

         little light, beautiful rightness, terrific wisdom

         of the baker and butcher, terrific

            the arrogance of a poet in the Chinese night

   Bobby Kaufman's China poems his disappearance

during the Cultural Revolution

   when the thing to do was to take a pair of

     scissors and cut up a poet's scroll, or a sledge hammer

         and send some ancient pottery to smithereens          

                or a wise grandmother to re-education camp

   in the far country, mid-winter

   like that, everyone with balls

     had a chance in our world of lanterns

            the Odes stand like monoliths, the Analects offer

          a route to order,  the Tao keeps the mind free, and the I Ching

advises, it's not always black and white,

          not forever north or south

       those anonymous men

in the Li Po, leaping, drinking, matching one

    another, drink for drink

     it's not just Chinatown, it's a chime

          and one last parking spot

      in Pearl Harbor when you and Sam

                        faded into photographs

and memories, into old watercolors

one elder under the statue of Sun-Yet-San      

      in Chinatown despite everything. . .

                pale light, pastel moon

NeeliCherkovski is an internationally celebrated poet and literary chronicler.  He is featured in the Jan 2016 issue of Talisman.