The time between our lives and deaths, that, is what truly counts, NOT the beginning, OR the very end, translated…
My Father Once Took Me Along, to Search the Trashes, Like We Were, Two Recyclers
Not Just the Trash, the Weeds, the Grasses, the Papers, the Hays, the Fallen Leaves, and Cow Dung, Chicken Shit, Goat Shit, They’re, Considered, Garbage
But, Caught Between the Rich and the Poor Living in the Rurals, Who Can Define What Constitutes as Trash Precisely?
If We’re, Able to, Turn What We’d Collected, into Fertilizer that’s, Useful
My Father Taught Me How to Use the Iron Forks, to Turn the Composts Over Repeatedly
with the Alternating Layers of Cow Dung and Weeds, the Chicken Shits and the Rice Shells, Like the Nine-Tiered Cakes
Sometimes, the Mixtures Even Had Chicken Bones and Leftovers in Them, from Before, Even Earlier
There Wasn’t the Flush Toilets, and, the Best Way to Use Our Wastes Were to Just Collect & Dump Them Down, Layer, by Layer, with the Moisture that Helped with the Spreading of Our Own Fertilizers
The Lower I’d Flipped Downward, the Darker it Was, the More Oily, More Fatty
This, Needed to Go Through the Fermentation Process, as He’d Flipped the Materials Repeatedly, and Chewed on the Betel Nuts
After Awhile, He Could No Longer Smell the Rancid, But Instead, it was Like, He Was, Smelling Something Aromatic, like Enjoying that Serving of Stinky Tofu,
as the Food Digested Inside the Stomach, with the Assortments of Microbials, Turning into Yeast, Kneaded, Then, Steamed, into Those, Buns, How the Rice Fermented, and Became, the Sticky Rice Treats
Like How I’d, Squatted Down to Defecate, Dumbfounded, Thinking on Things, or, Creating
The Procedures to Ferment This Poem; Hearing the Foods Getting Cooked Thorough in the Kitchen
Like How the Invisible Bud Came from the Rotten Seeds Buried Deep, But it’s Still, Going, Like Those Melons that Grew an Inch a Night, or the Fetus
The Bloated Night Colors and Night Air, the Thinly Rainforest Evaporating the Loosely Compacted Fog in the Morn
As, My Father Had Passed a Long Time Ago, and, I’m Still Unwilling, Not Daring to, Spread His Ashes Under the Trees as Compost, Like How the Fallen Leaves, the Withered Grasses, Became the Mud in Spring, Protecting the Flowers. And for Thousands of Years, on the Battlefields, How Many Corpses Became the Composts Buried Underground, and Turned Themselves into, Gasoline, and, Being Civilized as We, No Matter How Good We’re Living, Can We, Separate Ourselves from the Wars, and the Trash.
And so, this, is what we all amount to, compost, because ashes to ashes, and DUST INTO dust, that, is what we all eventually, become, and, the important thing is that CHUNK of time we were allotted, between our births and deaths!