Ghost

A poem and musical performance of grief, death and rebirth

Watch Ghost, a dancing poetry on YouTube

Ghost

[This is a piece of work created eight years ago, in collaboration with Christian Swenson and Tim Malone, at Studio Current in Seattle.

Tao Te Ching says, there is a time for being vigorous, a time for being exhausted; a time for being safe, a time for being in danger. In life, there is a time to celebrate and rejoice, and there is a time to surrender to grief and loss. This piece of performance honors many years of grief when I was deprogramming myself from the influence of colonization and capitalism.]

In the blasting thundering of gun shots
I am dead.
Blood splashes on the wall
Brain stains the dirt below
Flesh and broken limbs splatter around.

For a long time
I am a mere ghost
Too shocked to accept that I am dead
Floating over the grey, forlorn land
Mourning over my rotting body
Worms and snails feasting
Fungi and bacteria swarming
Breaking it apart bit by bit into the black matter of earth

As shock lifts its iron curtain
A searing grief creeps into the empty space
My ghostly self stumbles upon
The gun that killed me and others like me

A nimble and powerful machine
Made to destroy
A machine forcing itself upon any virgin territory of its desire
A machine hoarding resources away from “others”
A machine dispensing pain and death to those who defy it

Not long ago
Someone envisioned the machine in their imagination
Knowledge and rigor brought the vision down to the plane of reality
Precision fits the trigger, the barrel, the hammer and the cylinder together
Will and persistence
Perfected it through countless experiments

What would happen if I extract the
Imagination, knowledge, rigor and persistence from the gun?
And merge them to my soul?
My soul that loves, instead of kills
Unites, instead of divides
Trusts, instead of fears
Empowers, instead of conquers
Creates music that bathes the world in its loving songs
Instead deafening the ears with its mindless blasts?

Can I invent an apparatus that celebrates life instead of kills?
Can I ferment the instinct to destroy into the joy to create?
Can I shoot myself back to life?

I take the gun apart
I study what makes it a gun
I dive into the pool of imagination
My thinning ghostly body feeds on the knowledge
Fortified by the discipline required to weld an indestructible will

I experiment the new inventions on myself
Since I am already dead
I am free to shoot myself again and again
With rounds and rounds of failed attempts

I wait.
I wait.
And I wait.
I wait for the time to come
When the changing tides of the season
Polishes the sharp, cutting corners of my offering
When the ample sunshine of the never-ending summer
Ripens the green fruits of my labor
When the fuel gushing from the deep chasm under the ocean
Tends the cauldron of my creation

I wait.
And wait.
When death’s anguish
Throbbing pain of the wound
And rage towards the enemy
Decompose into rich humus
Replenishing the soil
I wait.
And wait.
When the memory of my old life
Releases its haunting grip on my diaphragm
So that I can draw in a full belly of fresh breath

The message of another spring
Gently falls as a warm rain
Wakes up the ground
Still steeped in its wintery dream
I feel I am ready
To be born again
As a new baby
Eager
To embrace the world
In a new life

Afterword

Many “ghosts” are living among us, walking aimlessly on the streets and singing silent songs into our ears. In the modern culture, we are told to shut our eyes, close our hearts and deafen our ears to them. “Dare you listen to them, a psychiatric sentence of mental disease and heavy-duty drugs will be waiting.” The warning says.

Among these “ghosts”, there is the spirit of the ancient Chinese oracle book, Book of Change (also known as I- Ching). As the western reductionist, materialistic-centered world view conquered the land where this book used to be loved and revered, it has been reduced to an empty shell of what it used to be and forgotten by its own people.

When its grief-stricken ghost came to knock on my door, I first rejected it out of a mortifying fear. As it insisted on coming in, I challenged it with my doctorate degree trained, scientist’s logic. It persisted. When I realized that it had sunk deep into my heart and started eroding away the castle of fear where I hid, I wrestled with it. It persisted. Eventually I surrendered, swinging the door open and invited it in to dance with my buried desire, secret impulse and latent gifts. In this dance, we are giving each other a whole new life.