What is Sun Li Tun (er) without the dealers, the "lady bars, lady bars", the happy hours, the alcoholics, the freaks. Just a boring a night.

What is Beijing without the smog, the smelly cabs, the spitting men, the KTVs, the "er", the the pirated things, without Mao, without equal inequality? Plain boring. Just as your life.

What is the third ring road, with out the cars, the accidents, the traffic, the sight... just plain dull.

Who wants to leave in perfection? Who wants a boring life? Who wants Europe or the USA... where everything has already been done and nothing is astray, or so it seems.

For the "lost" of us, there is Asia. For the rest of you there is the world. I drink to that.

Poem: Jack Raif is dead

Knock, knock,

Who is there?

Jack.

Jack who?

Jack Raif you little punk,

Just because you got a haircut and quit drinking doesn't make you hot stuff, so puff off that little bluff you are playing, denying me, ignoring me, just because you think you fell in love… but isn't that the worst addiction of them all, you can’t think, you feel like shit, your jealousy overflows your mind with “ifs” and “what not” and you are not in control of your emotion, acting silly, please, you are worst than a hill billy on a ghetto in New York city.

Knock, knock,

Who is there?

Jack.

Jack Raif?

Who you think it would be Jack Shit, Black Jack jacking off like a cracker jack, remember the times at the bars? Remember the lonely Sunday mornings with no scheme or relentless to feel the need, you used to rest your head on my shoulder and I made you feel that things didn't matter, that somehow somewhere you were appreciated for being me, and our favorite color is black, like jack, and we clearly do not need to live, we want to die, isn't that what you use to say? No commitment to friends, no commitment to a relation, or a culture or way of living, cause we are artist and we feel to much to make commitments cause in the end you know, you and I suffer, cause for normal people is easy to say GOOD BYE, ITS OVER, but that is not an option, God made you who you are and you can't change that or change the past that has made you who you are, black, and jack, rum and coke, a glass tinted with art and suffering, and rejection objection to religion and repulsion for mass appreciation. All doors do not lead to the realms of perception but to me. Jack, you are bad and there is no way you will deny who you are, a mask, pale and cold, because I’ve taught you not to love.

Knock, knock,

Who is there?

Fuck that! It's Jack Raif,

No man, it's Jorge.

I fed you with all my anger so like clouds when they tumble with each other the lightning would strike the paper and the sound would resonate on the walls of poetry readings like these. I used you like a mask so I could hide all the discomfort that human interaction causes: tilting my brain from side to side in a cubicle of insecurity and low self – esteem. But I found her, and though scared and insecure I will pursue this light of hope and happiness that has ever been but a dream in a chaotic life like mine, cease to exist or kneel to me and succumb to my will for if not, prepare to dwell without a body, prepare to disintegrate, because I'm the sun and you are just a satellite, because am the source and you are just but a mere will, for Chen Shu, I would scrape the sky from its grey and paint it blue so I could put a smile upon her face, and though the future is not known I will construct from scratch a world so she can support her hope, I will desist of Jack if by no other means I could change my life from black to white and make both of their existence the ying and the yang and let my life be lived in complete peace, for she is my love and you are just a tool to escape from a society that never appreciated: sensitive, weird, strange, and what about my friends like bob, josh, zeth and zhou that you just hindered because you wanted to glow, you little fuck, prepare to subdue, to submit, or else like all my old loves, prepare to die, and walk in my cemetery of lost hope. Bada bing bada boom, and that's all!

Jack Raif

Yeah. So what? I fell in love in Beijing.

Millions of individuals, heads stammering out of the mouth of Xizhimen subway station. I stand still, thinking. Thinking of you. Thinking of them. Thinking... where do all these people come from? Where do they go? Why are they all in a hurry? It's as if they follow some strange energy that guides them to a certain place. I, by the other hand, sit there and just watch all of them, they are blinded by light, they are stressfully walking in two directions, to and fro. The feeling, the sense of just stopping, of inactivating the body to activate the senses in this chaotic transit of human beings, of pushing, of shoving, of sounds, of bad smells, of.... dynamism. Why you follow? Why you walk? Why you breath? I am the surgeon and want to open you up to see what makes you tick.

Then I started walking and became one of them. I can only be aware of this at this point, I hope later I can brake away and walk like a God, incandescent, leading the herd, not following them.

By midnight the lights of a white room acompany me. She went home that night and space creeps up in me and loneliness starts to speak. I touch its lips and kiss it. Fuck off, I think it has been enough. It's time to give myself a chance.

By morning I miss her and wish we were never we, I hate missing, I hate the pain, I hate... not being with her. Dead end here, no way to avoid suffering.

By afternoon, she calls, my ears eat her voice like ambrosia and every vibration is absorbed, nothing is wasted. A thought arises, feeling too much, my disease, its a pool where alone, I swim. I said good-bye but wanted more of.... I dont know.

By night I get home, she is waiting, and the subway and midnight and morning and afternoon are pushed away. Nothing matters when she is here. Bien fucking "cursi", but that is the way love is, isn't it?

Jack Raif.