#aiqing

Happy birthday Weiwei!

Ai Wei Wei, his side job drawing pastel portraits on 6th Ave and West 3rd Street, along with fellow Chinese expats,  Greenwich Village, New York. June 2, 1989, days before the Tiananmen Square June 4 Massacre and the famous tank showdown on June 5. Allen had stopped by to ask him what news he had about the Tiananmen Square protests that had been intensifying since April. He and Allen knew each other through Weiwei's father, the great modern Chinese poet, Ai Qing, who’d been sent into hard labor exile in western China in the late 1950s, where and when Weiwei then grew up. (photo: Allen Ginsberg, courtesy Stanford University Libraries/Allen Ginsberg Estate)

#aiweiwei #allenginsberg #beatgeneration #tiananmensquare #china #poetrycommunity #chinesepoetry #aiqing @aiww (at New York, New York)

there is a bravery to things i wouldn't presume

to know or understand. there is a charm to which you

stand in front and tuck your hands into your pocket,

back straight like an airplane runway and i can imagine one tripping

off your spine, spinning into the atmosphere and finding

its place in the stars. you are, in some ways, the most brilliant

piece of architecture i’ve ever had the luck of setting my eyes

upon. with roads tracing the lines of your palms, buildings stretching up to

press kisses to your night sky hair, highways stretching out

around your broad shoulders, streets built upon your fingers.

once upon a time, people tried to build a staircase to heaven. once upon

a time, they almost succeeded. once upon a time, god opened his door to them

and said will you come? once, once, once, i stacked up the bricks 

i had collected and tried to build a staircase to your heart. 

i reached the door and knocked-

did i dream of you last night because you were the last thing i thought of?

my bf, seriously, without hesitation: yes ofc