Beijing a go go go go

Sadly, I've been confined to my hotel room for three days straight with traveler's belly. I've worked on freelance. Wrote a couple of poems. Slept, and you know, did the go go go thing. I watch the ceaseless traffic of people in cars, buses, bicycles, taxis, and on foot and think "they are not holed up in here, they can move about without needing a bathroom no more than 3 feet away!" Jim has been wonderful bringing me the Chinese version of gatoraid and bowls of broth with fishy lumps rather like gefilta fish, but better. Well, I had wanted to lose weight...but can't recommend this method.

Night Storm

Thunder echoes down the hutongs
shakes metal cranes and rising towers
drives yellow smog to the Yellow Sea,
a dragon screaming light and tears
over it's home so changed by men.


Flux in the East

So much to see
and I am stuck
in a bathroom.
Oh tell me the
Great Wall and
Temple of Heaven
will still be there
when I can
leave my hotel?

Hutongs, in case you didn't know, are the streets with low buildings, so ancient and the real "old" China, now so few left with the pace of development...