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Best Poems Written by Christy Chiang

Below are the all-time best Christy Chiang poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

Details | Christy Chiang Poem

Allah Came Knocking At My Heart

Allah came knocking at my heart

I have no choice and played no part

But still Allah came and

Allah came knocking at my heart.

 

Allah came knocking with a song

He came with a message, and a message strong --

La ilaha illalah,

Words of peace from afar. 

 

Allah came knocking with the blessed

Truth upon me they impressed,

"Let us show you a new way,

Start your journey today."

 

I've slipped the door open a crack

You can't go back

Once you let the sunlight in --

Alhamdullilahi rabbil alameen.

 

The Truth, the Peace and I were worlds apart

Until Allah came

Until Allah came knocking at my heart.

Details | Christy Chiang Poem

A Thank-You Poem For My History Teacher

Dear Mrs Chan,

Thank you for all the things
You’ve clearly explained and shown
And even more for all that 
You left me to find out on my own.

Thank you, when I pestered for an answer,
For standing your ground and holding firm – 
I know you want me to explore
Because that’s the only way I’ll really learn. 

Thank you for exposing me
To the subtleties of the English language
Certain connotations, small differences in meaning,
Always looking for the precise word, the precise usage. 

Thank you for encouraging me
To abandon the cowardly-conventional view
To look for something
I believe in, something new.

Thank you for all the sour, unapproving frowns
You shot, threw, thrusted and sent my way
They worked wonders
To keep my illogical misconceptions at bay.

Thank you for your aptly-set standards – 
A challenging but never impossibly-high wall.
You make me love a good challenge
You make me want to give my all.

Thank you for lighting up the bulbs
In my stupid little mind
When I didn’t get it, you connected the neurons manually
And occasionally unwind.

Thank you for all that you’ve done
You make History lessons so much fun. 

Thank you, Mrs Chan! You’re the BEST!

Details | Christy Chiang Poem

What Makes Us Human?

What makes us human?
Is it love?
So many of us take it for granted
Yet so precious few know how to give it.
Is it hope?
So many of us fall into despair over tiny things
Yet so precious few know how to find strength in it.
Is it intelligence?
So many of us ooh and ahh over what technology can bring
Yet so precious few know how to live in harmony with nature.
Has two thousand years of civilization
Really brought nothing more than destruction?
Has it not also brought realization?
Within time, there is change.
Change for the better, bringing us back from the fringe.
There is always love, 
To guide us through storms and roads that are rough.
There is always hope, 
To back us while we cope
With our troubles, every day that we live
Every day that the sun rises from the heaving sea.
And though we face a heating Earth, 
A dimming of our days,
With our intelligence we can fix it in a thousand small ways.
Human qualities come shining through
They almost always do.
It is the "always" that we dwell upon and have faith in,
So that a new, better age may begin.

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My Days and My Nights -- Translation From My Arabic Poem

This is a lousy translation of my just-as-lousy first attempt at writing poems in Arabic. I've only been learning Arabic for a year and a half, so there goes the cliches; the sentiment is genuine and heartfelt though. It was too painful to say the things I want to say in English...so I turned to Arabic. It's also a lot more concise in Arabic. 


You came back to me, in my dreams

On the day that

My eyes first knew you

O, how I wish it was today!

O, how I wish to return to that day!

 

My hand remembers you

My heart remembers you

You are in everything I see

The tree under her we sat

The cat that ran between our legs

 

Once, once, once…

Once you were with me

O I do not forget my days and nights –

A month like a year;

A night like an hour.

I cannot — I cannot!

I cannot forget my days and nights (with you)

Details | Christy Chiang Poem

Counting Coconuts

Each day many fall,

Them hardened furry balls.

And oh how they call

Perched on the coconut tree sturdy and tall



Nothing but ‘em coconuts on a dead-end street

With their half-formed wobbly meat

Them coconuts that leave

Me bitter from the sweet.



The tears of the coconut you see

Fall for ideas that never come to be

Dangling fibers from the tree

Bear witness to my priceless fee.



I count them coconuts on a dead-end street,

Each one rotten and each one sweet.

One rumbled of the thunder the night two hearts met

One caught all my laughter in its fibrous net.



O coconuts of the dead-end street

O coconuts rotten and sweet

O coconuts when they fall

Splatter into wounds bloody and raw



O coconuts of abundance

O coconuts of remembrance

Them coconuts, how they count how they

Count your absence

Details | Christy Chiang Poem

English Exams

In the writing exam
Everyone had shaking hands.
Should you use past, present or future tense?
If you say you're not nervous it's just pretense.

In the listening exam
Everyone thinks "I must do better"
In the long task, you find -- "Oh no! A formal letter!"
And you mutter miserably "What's the matter?"

In the reading exam
Your legs are shaking so badly you cannot stand.
There're difficult words that you don't understand
And suddenly you brian turns into mush and sand.

In the oral exam
You're fighting to have your say 
After all it's not like chatting with your pals any other day
Your confidence starts to fade. 

-- Dedicated to everyone sitting for the HKCEE or the HKALE :) 
Hang in there my friends
This misery WILL end!

Details | Christy Chiang Poem

A Day In My Life

Waking to the call to prayer near a Turkish mosque 
Blowing “bonjour” to passersby in chic, classy France 
Nibbling cheese on a snow-capped mountaintop in Switzerland 
Printing footsteps across the linen snow in Siberia 

Singing with the birds on the Mongolian grasslands 
Gathering simple smiles along a street in Indonesia 
Strutting past all the windows down Fifth Avenue 
Dancing with the pouring rain in the Amazon 

Inhaling the love swirling in the Darling Harbour breeze 
Planting kisses on the sparkling gems of Angola 
Tasting the spice-laced air in a crowded market of Morocco 
Leading a weary camel through the desert of Arabia 

Then near the end of the day I 
Wade across the Red Sea to catch 
The sunset on the golden Egyptian sand and 
Lay back to count the stars 
With my head against a date palm tree 
Somewhere in the silent darkness of Afghanistan.

Details | Christy Chiang Poem

The Two Faces of China

China, the rising giant;
China, the ruthless tyrant.
China, proud host of the Olympic Games,
China, notorious records of shame.
China, Olympic torch burning bright;
China, missing flame of human rights.
China, model of reform and openness;
China, cruel crackdowns with patent bluntness.
China, ring loud and true and forever-more the praises for the communist party;
China, suppressed are the sounds of prayers, of dissension, of truth, of free assembly.
China, vibrant, booming economy;
China, widespread and extreme poverty.
China, brand new railways and paved roads miles and miles long;
China, exploitations wrench from workers the saddest song.
China, pretty facade of modernization;
China, underlying demoralization.
China, one big all-embracing harmonious family;
China, oblivious to one another's agony.
China, five thousand years of civilization, no easy feat;
China, people spitting, swearing and cutting queues on the streets.
China, obsessed with Confucian virtues of clean and just office;
China, plagued by inefficiency, corruption -- all common practice.
China, the pledge of honesty considered so sacred it should never be broken;
China, the truth -- SARS, the children buried under the collapsed buildings -- so rarely 
spoken.
China, endless acres of lush forests, mountains of immense beauty;
China, those same hilltops now adorned with stumps instead of our precious trees.
China, bestowed with great rivers and lakes which have given us life, civilization and so 
much more;
China, remaining today are a dirty brown slush light years from the clear, glimmering 
streams in folklore.
China, as shown in ancient texts the pioneer of sustainable development;
China, those once loving hands wrecking unthinkable havoc with the environment.

There are two Chinas --
One a never-ending, winding, colorful thread,
The one portrayed in all the ancient classics we've read,
The ideal society that exists in our heads
But most of which is left unsaid.
There are two Chinas -- 
The other an ugly red blob with numerous flaws,
The one trapped helplessly yet somewhat contentedly within the dictator's claws,
The one where chaos perpetuate without just and equal laws,
The one we want to turn our back on and wish we never even saw.
Speak out -- it's the only thing we can do,
And hope, hope with all your heart and soul -- that it might finally get through.

Details | Christy Chiang Poem

The Road To the Ballot Box -- In Memory of the Tiananmen Incident 1989

The Road to the Ballot Box – In Memory of the 1989 June Fourth Movement in Tiananmen 
Square, Beijing

Up high, the portrait of Chairman Mao looms
Over the ballot box, wrapped in chains of doom
Beautiful as a mirage, a rainbow
And no more reachable.
The road ahead is winding, at times backwards bending,
And above all, never-ending,
And the one before – all too painful.
The year of bloodshed;
The year when students begged
By strike, by mass hunger,
For freedom and democracy
But heard instead the bullet’s thunder;
The eternal moment when one held his head high
And a train of tanks he defied;
When students refused to leave the Square, their friends,
And sat unflinching through the bloody crimson end.
The muted cry of these forgotten heroes
On that fateful night twenty years ago
Still rings loud and true in our hearts
In a land where the engine of freedom wouldn’t start.
Twenty years on they walk
Defiant, grim-faced,
Battered yet unfazed.
Clothes torn in rags
Here and there, a splatter of red
Blisters on their feet
Eyes that bear a burning piercing heat.
Our hearts may be broken
And our spirits shaken
But still, the truth is out there – 
Still being spoken.
Once more I lift my eyes
To the mirage in the sky
Will we ever get there?
Walk on – do you dare?

Details | Christy Chiang Poem

Daddy It Hurts

Sometimes, when it hurts too much,
When my cheeks are moist to the touch,
When all that hurt buried deep inside
Leaps at me like the tide

I press it down with glue, extra strong
Wrap bundles of tape around it, miles long
This I do, as I do best;
But sorrow isn’t solid but a cloud of gas.

It drowns out all the laughter, the happy parts,
All that filters through are the sobs from my heart.
It blinds me to all but a dreary grey,
All the vibrant colors slipped away.

So I prescribe myself to go through the day, laugh my laugh,
Until it sounds like the one from my happier half
And push the hurt to the back of my mind
Until the inevitable next time, an encounter most unkind.

Daddy I hate forgetting, I hate doing this to you
But Daddy it’s the only thing I can think of to do.