Pick Up the Pearl Read online



  pick up the pearl

  a suite of tai chi & martial art poems,

  the wudang sonnet series,

  & set of haikus on the yi jing.

  by

  pat mcgowan mca (creative writing)

  ∞Ω

  Other works by the same author

  Fiction

  Ride A White Mare

  Jade is My Stone

  Mostly Friday Nights

  Splitting Apart

  The Shades of Paracelsus

  The Drain Brains

  Nonfiction

  TAO: Total Person and One World

  Tales of the Dragon, the Bear and Other Wondrous Creatures

  ∞Ω

  fomelhaut publishing 2016 sydney

  © copyright pat mcgowan

  typeset by pat mcgowan

  published by fomelhaut publishing, 2016

  with the assistance of lulu.com

  Inquiries: [email protected]

  twitter @maigaowen

  isbn 978-0-9925812-4-4

  copies available at www.lulu.com/spotlight/fomelhaut

  visit blog at pjmcgowan.com

  ∞Ω

  thanks dorothy cui for cover photo taken on zhongqiu festival 2016

  ∞Ω

  to my tai chi friends

  where ever you are

  ∞Ω

  Table of Contents

  introduction

  fu xi

  sonnet to simon

  beginner

  david carradine

  boxer rebel 1

  boxer rebel 2

  lou reed

  yang the invincible

  uncle lu

  bruce lee

  a fighter

  dragon slayer

  the pa kua teacher

  elizabeth

  the judoist

  the tycoon

  kakek

  yang wu dui

  tai chi hermit

  online master (junbao)-found poem

  gu ruzhang (1893-1952)

  luke

  the cabbie

  brandon

  incognito

  hello ms dolley (found poem)

  the one and only

  over his head

  the pastiche goes on

  that mancunian humour

  thank you, champion volanko

  what do you do?

  wudang journey

  question

  mountain walking

  zhang san feng

  tian zhu peak 1

  tian zhu peak 2

  tai chi

  to the mountain

  haiku homage to the yi jing

  introduction to prose works of pat mcgowan

  ∞Ω

  Introduction

  This collection has grown organically over years. Many poems are the result of my creative writing study at the University of Wollongong in 2008-2010. The big exception is the haiku collection I wrote in 1999 while living in Moscow & whose inclusion makes this themed collection more complete.

  When it comes to the Asian martial arts thing, I am a product of the 60s and 70s. I remember how, in the 60s, we were captivated by the Japanese TV series, Samurai, and The Phantom Agents. My father even took me to the Sydney Stadium to see the Samurai stars on stage. But it was the 70s show Kung Fu that lifted my interest to another level. This series was written by Ed Spielman who also wrote The Mighty Atom: The Life and Times of Joseph Greenstein, an exceptional book. All these shows spoke of a special personal power and skill that resonated with so many of us at that time.

  It was a few years after the Kung Fu series that I went to a tai chi class. It had a dramatic impact on me and I found it easy to include the daily regime of tai chi into my lifestyle. In a way, it’s a bit like the empty cup that Lao Zi writes about: we make a cup from pottery but it’s the empty space inside the cup that we actually use. In the same way, the tai chi I explore every day is an empty cup but, over time, it can deliver so much in the way of health and wellbeing. We become stimulated to share only the best of what we know.

  I named the collection after a tai chi move called ‘pick up the pearl from the bottom of the sea and lift it up to the boat’. I know there’s not much information online about this move but I’m sure it can speak for itself.

  Pat McGowan

  Loftus 2016

  ∞Ω

  fu xi

  From this mountain,

  I watch Atlantis,

  a wounded champion,

  crash into the sea,

  swirl and sink,

  rare bubbles escape.

  As the shock waves disperse,

  I look to the future,

  with blueprints,

  penned in the blood of the past,

  how to farm,

  how to cook,

  how to find peace in the pre-sent,

  guidance

  for the one and the many,

  until it’s their time

  to return to the sea

  (fu xi is the legendary author of the Yi Jing Book of Changes)

  sonnet to simon

  Sorting and sifting for supreme ultimates,

  in a hand’s wave, he draws the wind out of winter,

  massages the sun into summer’s deep heart.

  One poem is the inverse of so much prose, but with

  nouns to announce and verbs to vibe, we may start.

  Life is meant to be Lao Zi but not lazy, he says

  in a voice that resonates right round the room.

  Mixing a new batch of the most precious idea:

  try, aspiring teacher and healer, to centre

  and open beyond thought, word or action.

  You must feel it. Let’s be easier on our selves.

  Come to a conclusion of yin and yang yet?

  He is the pieman, simple Simon and

  in the end, as we always knew, the end is never nigh.

  beginner

  My first tai chi lesson,

  so strange,

  we move and stand still.

  Movement in quietness,

  quietness in movement,

  we breathe out to our feet,

  hands and top of the head,

  half feel and half imagine.

  hands tingle, synapses spark,

  energy babbles

  through the creeks of our body.

  He says it brings us into alignment,

  in big and small ways.

  I understand:

  no more crooked men, crooked miles,

  sixpences and stiles.

  Walking back home, I see flowers

  poking through wrought iron fences,

  and crumbling sandstone walls.

  In my lounge-room, some MTV star

  throws laser beams from his hands

  and I know I’m lined up

  with the whole world.


  david carradine

  “When you can walk the rice paper without tearing it,

  your footsteps will not be heard." - Master Kan (Kung Fu)

  Walking barefoot,

  Once upon a time, I, David Carradine,

  across America,

  dreamed I was Kwai Chang Caine,

  with a bamboo flute,

  drifting happily here and there,

  hand-made,

  enjoying life,

  from hollow wood.

  without knowing who I was.

  Flashback to a student

  Suddenly I woke up

  in a temple learning

  and I was indeed David Carradine.

  the way of the immortals.

  Did David Carradine dream

  Flash forward to news reports

  he was Kwai Chang Caine,


  of an actor died of asphyxiation,

  or did Kwai Chang Caine dream

  in search of one more orgasm

  he was David Carradine?

  before morning

  boxer rebel 1

  At fifteen, he drifted alone, after the flood

  stripped him of family and home,

  his village washed away in one dark, gushing night.

  He housed an anger that banged on his liver,

  and a fear his country would go the same way,

  that’s why he started life as a Boxer,

  a promise and a pledge to put the world right.

  When they danced in a frenzy and fell on the ground,

  Kongming, his ghost teacher, whispered to him,

  till he jumped in the air, and rushed up for battle,

  knowing no weapon could break his skin.

  The flood went away and then came the drought.

  He didn’t hate Christians or straight eyes as such,

  but believed ridding them off was their magic way

  to make the rains come. He still thought that as he fell

  under a gunpowder shower of cannon balls and bullets.

  (Kongming, aka Zhu Ge Liang, brilliant military strategist from Han Dynasty novel ‘Romance of The Three Kingdoms’)

  boxer rebel 2

  To be a Soldier of Justice and Harmony,

  my childhood desire, rescue my country,

  badly bent over from drought and old age

  At twelve, I started Plum Blossom Boxing,

  in one family for nine hundred years,

  we flourished in every village and town.

  I next followed a heaven-sent teacher

  of an art known as Great Dream Boxing,

  he taught us to see all things as light.

  One summer, we flocked to the Spirit Boxers,

  our bodies but clothing worn by the gods,

  prepared for the fight to glorious death.

  Officials, dumb like chickens,

  kowtowing to foreigners, put up posters,

  called us Bandit Boxers, to be slain like dogs.

  Wounded but breathing, I mysteriously

  survived, and took up Yin Yang Boxing,

  to recover my health.

  Now an old man, wrinkled with experience

  and a long list of titles, I tell my grandchildren

  stories of valour in those old Boxer days.

  lou reed

  Lou Reed knows

  how to stay cool on stage,

  not like the The Beastie Boys

  who keep a stripper in a cage.

  Lou takes his tai chi teacher

  as part of each show.

  They work unhurried,

  as an unfailing rule.

  Once in tune, the feelings

  soon flow, freely unfurl.

  As each stands alone,

  they seek and they find.

  For them, it’s freedom,

  terra firma and friends.

  A little from here, a little from there,

  fitted inside this funny fling.

  It’s a fuel, it’s a gas, from empty to full.

  As it finally falls, they’re fast on their way.

  We watch and we play,

  the fool of no fool.

  yang the invincible

  A busy office in Guangzhou.

  At the weekly meeting,

  local staff sit,

  their backs straight, like ancestral tablets,

  awkwardly dismantle every word

  as I go over our client service charter,

  performance agreements,

  even a video of the laoban in Australia

  untangling our tagline: people are our business.

  And yet, day after day,

  face to face, and on the phones,

  we struggle with those clients,

  too many who rage behind the plate glass barriers:

  too many red voices, loud faces.

  One meeting,

  I tell them about Master Yang Lu Chen,

  who taught tai chi to the Manchus,

  a short man with a watchful eye,

  the manner of a reluctant guest.

  With nets set up behind him,

  he invited opponents, hour upon hour.

  Challengers bristled in queues

  waiting for their chance to dislodge him,

  (reminiscent of our clients

  around to the lift well outside our waiting room).

  He leaned forward to meet some of his opponents

  before steering them into one of the nets.

  Others, he let them come to him,

  and with a twist of his body,

  flicked them backwards through the air

  to be caught by those same nets.

  Impassive,

  impassable,

  impossible,

  he became known as Yang The Invincible.

  The staff listen,

  and relax.

  I see service improve

  and my tai chi expand.

  uncle lu

  On a day of cicada song and scents of dry grass,

  the villagers sit motionless in the shade of their huts.

  Older Brother, in tattered shorts, leaned against the front wall,

  turns his head to announce: ‘Everyone! Uncle Lu’s coming.’

  Meimei, in a rough stitch red dress, jumps up and hoorays,

  ‘Yay! Uncle Lu, he brings us cakes and tells us stories.’

  She scuffles down to join her brother at the gate.

  The neighbour’s dog bristles and scrambles after her.

  They watch the dog scoot down the dusty road barking

  at Uncle Lu who stops and laughs up to the sky.

  The dog snarls and bounds in, for his Achilles tendon.

  Yelping, it quickly turns, and disappears into bushes.

  Older Brother, solemn, folded arms, drawls:

  ‘See that. Uncle Lu used chi to repel the dog’s attack.

  That stupid dog knows who the master is now.

  Come on. Let’s help him with his bag.’

  Soon Uncle Lu sits at the table with a cup of tea.

  Meimei is crowding him: ‘What did you bring us,

  what did you bring us from town, Uncle Lu?’

  The whole house shakes as Lu laughs again.

  ‘One, moment, Little Mei,’ he says, making space

  to lift his left foot up onto his knee. Searching

  the skin near his ankle, he pulls out a tooth,

  and thinks of that dog in need of more training.

  bruce lee

  ‘Walk like a cat.’ Wu Yu Xiang

  Bruce Lee, in a black Chinese suit,

  prances around the ring like a panther,

  it’s 1964, Long Beach, California.

  He’s about to unveil the one-inch punch to the West,

  a call to a new generation of dreamers:

  they can be Superman too, with a little training,

  plus it’s a finger wave at the USA’s military backswing.

  The sparring partner, in white, stands tall and waits.

  Lee rocks into position,

  his fist one inch away from that partner’s chest,

  he focuses, suddenly, a ruffle:

  the partner is blasted backwards across the ring.

  The television booms with too much bass.

  Behind a haze of cigar smoke, Papa Sierra grates:

  ‘I’ll put my money on American might any day.”

  His mouth, uneven, like a broken fence

  lining a frontier farm in some B grade Western.

  “Besides, it’s our boy, Cassius Clay,

  who’s the heavyweight champion of the world,

  Cassius Marcellus Clay.’

  a fighter

 

  Yeah sister, I grew up in Adelaide, />
  My father did the odd labouring job.

  He couldn’t read or write and had no trade

  but wasn’t one to sit around and sob.

  There’s many ways money can be made,

  so he could feed his wife and the rest of us mob.

  That’s why he took to bare-fist fights

  behind the hotel. Saturday nights,

  the stadium ran a program of boxing.

  Once that was over, the crowd hurried out,

  made its way down to the carpark clearing

  to get money on before the first bout.

  Barefoot, singlet and jeans, he’d be waiting,

  deaf to the cruel taunts and angry shouts

  They wanted to see him knocked off his feet.

  He copped many blows, never defeat.

  I’d walk him home, the eldest kid.

  Swollen face, troubled limp; he never spoke,

  any discussion was strictly forbid.

  By the corner store, he’d light up a smoke,

  pull out his notes and hand me a quid

  for the next day’s ice cream and coke,

  Not far from the house, he’d break his taboo:

  ‘I love your mother, what else can I do?

  (first published in Tide at UOW in 2010)

  dragon slayer

  She stands at a distance,

  veiled loathing eyes.

  Students, cross-legged at his feet,

  shower in droplets of greatness

  blissfully soaking them up

  as he spouts on how to kill dragons.

  She studied with him for ten years,

  was his best student,

  she knows every guile of the dragon

  and the very best way to disable one.

  Alas, she cannot find a dragon,

  never found one yet.

 

  He tells them it’s an art, it’s a science,

  he sees out of the corners of his eyes,

  eyes which radiate, as he waves his arms

  webbed to his body by bands of energy,

  and his body movements seem finely balanced

  by an invisible tail.

  Aha! At last,

  she has found her dragon,