an automythography
I used to teach kung fu.
That’s a true thing I tell people
when I’m drunk.
As if to say I didn’t always
sit on this stool.
This is all part of a plan—
I’m not destroying myself;
it’s just that I have a keen sense of timing,
and now is not the time.
As if to say I could kill you
with the death touch.
Or I might kick you in the head
without bothering to stand up,
if the hour comes around.
As if to say this is not how it ends,
sulking in the bony half-light like a ghoul.
On this stool I trudge along,
waist-deep in the corpses of myself.
I am the mysterious wanderer
playing his flute in a forest of bamboo.
I am meditating beneath a waterfall
where the vain peony clings to its treacherous petals.
I am coming to the aid of a town extorted.
The imperial army cannot track me
in the pure snow.
Should I spill my beer, the Jade Dragon
will rise from the foam
and agitate the ten thousand things.
I will ride it through the Jewel Gate
across a bridge of magpies,
which will scatter in flight behind me.