This is a dead ditch rank with despair’s backwater. A brisk wind can’t raise a ripple from its skin. Why not junk some more scrap tin and copper here, or dump your rotten dinner leftovers in.

Maybe the copper will turn to an emerald green, and peach blossoms bloom out of the tin pots’ rust. Then let the grease weave a layer of silk brocade where germs brew a mist like twilit clouds at dusk.

Let the dead ditchwater ferment to green liquor bubbling up floating pearls out of its white foam, little pearls growing to bigger pearls in chuckles that burst when liquor-raiding mosquitos come.

And so a dead ditch rank with despair’s backwater can claim something lively, bright and all its own. If the frogs here can’t handle the solitude this stagnant muck can gurgle them up a tune!

This is a dead ditch rank with despair’s backwater. No place for a Thing of Beauty in its juice. Let’s just let Hellion Ugliness culture it and see what kind of world it can produce.

Translated by A.Z. Foreman

I’ve been down on my luck lately and I came across this Poet while researching Anna Louise Strong, they’re buried in the same cemetery. I hope my art and writing has even 0.0001% impact theirs has had. None of the locals seem to want to work with me, idk if it’s because I lack the skills, am being replaced by machines or it’s due to prejudices, but it’s a shame I truly just wished to make the world a better place.

It kind of bothers me because I think every human being who’s willing is capable of learning, but to be treated as being unable to learn makes me feel like I’m being treated as less than human. I hope one day prejudices will be able to be set aside and the world will be full of flowing fresh waters, for everybody.