By: Yucheng Tao

Kiss

Under obsidian clouds,
Flowers kiss bees.
Bees gaze at the soil—
Who will kiss it?

Purple

Yesterday, today, tomorrow — all purple.
Yesterday, today, I can’t sleep.
Tomorrow’s test is hard and purple.
My emotions are purple,
even the exam paper is purple.
Purple amplifies my fear,
or maybe fear is purple.
Fear takes my sleep
and balance from life.
Purple appears
in yesterday, today, and tomorrow.

Lone City

I
In trance profound.
The wind slashed through silent streets;
dusty shoes wandered, steps unkind.
Was it imagination or my mind wandering?
Back to Lone City;
no paradise adorned its halls.
Yet before I came, it seemed alive,
but soon I saw through its guise.
For the first time, I saw the rotting,
lifeless eyes of my classmates
— mere shadows of life.
I sought escape but found no path.
Time and loneliness, creeping vines,
bound me tight, flesh turned to stone.
A living mummy, I became,
entombed in suffocating walls of despair.
I was a bard and a cowboy wild,
chasing prairies, freedom vast.
Yet all was mockery, barren jest;
no frontier welcomed my stride.
The city’s prison caught my feet,
my song and dreams alike denied.
Only four years of college, like a sculpture
fixed in the narrow campus.
II
The classroom floor, wood hard and still,
held no breath of prairie free.
Life here was static, framed and cold,
time’s arrow halted, none could flee.
Lessons rusted, robotic words;
steel-bound rules pressed me low.
An anchor kept my spirit fast,
unmoving in its deadly flow.

“Who shall destroy this order old?”
I cried into the aching void.
My longing crushed, my dreams alloyed.
“I am no fish; I cannot swim.
I am no bird; I cannot fly.”
Three years have passed, ambition waned,
and still I drift, a ghost in chains.
My bones, once strong, now lacked their frame.
Did only a fragile frame remain?

III
Summer dawned.
Exams loomed large, a sound—
a pulse, throbbed through endless days.
And yet within that paper’s void,
I sought to sate my starving soul.
In my mad imagination, my heart burned like
flames on the mountains, consuming all in its fire.
In madness, I stood still once more,
reviving dreams, though hope was faint.
A monologue to the sky above my head.

IV
Autumn waned.
Back to this place where dreams had fled.
No matter how lost my heart may be,
I have always been gathering faint strength.
Yet something stirred, a voice innate.
I sat and stood, again and again—
a flood of whispers filled my veins.
For just a moment, bold and clear,
Though my wings of soul were clipped and torn,
still, my voice would shout:
“Though I am wingless, I am a dreamer anytime.”

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Yucheng Tao, from China, is studying songwriting at the MI College of Contemporary Music in Los Angeles. His poetry has appeared in multiple literary venues, including three Wingless Dreamer’s Open Theme contest selections. NonBinary Review later reprinted his poem” Blue Horse” alongside an author interview. Synchronized Chaos featured three of his poems, while his work also appeared in Ink Nest, The Arcanist, Moonstone Art Center, Poetry Potion, and Spillwords.