Featuring “River of Stars” Alex S. Johnson and Ma Yongbo

Cover design by Adrian Baldwin 

RIVER OF STARS 

This new poetry collection by Alex S. Johnson and Ma Yongbo is available in paperback from amazon.com. 

A NOCTURNICORN BOOKS release 

Two oceans meet in this landmark collaboration between Alex S. Johnson—author of The Doom Hippies and Doctor Flesh, hailed by John Shirley as “the Baudelaire of our time”—and Ma Yongbo, one of China’s most influential avant-garde poets, founder of polyphonic writing and objectified poetics, and a major translator of Anglo-American literature.

Helen Pletts writes that Ma’s imagery is “so beautiful that it stays with you long after reading, until the phrases seem to have an elevated existence of their own.”

Ma Yongbo adds: “Our poems are like two states of the ocean—Alex surging and passionate, my own hiding turbulent undercurrents beneath a calm surface. Together, these forms create a new expression that transcends language and national boundaries.”

RIVER OF STARS is where those currents converge—East and West, storm and stillness, two visionary voices shaping a shared sky.

Now from A COLLECTIVE PAW. 

Sample Poems

Whitman's Sleeves

By Alex Johnson and translated by Ma Yongbo

Like Walt Whitman's sleeves
draped over the quarterdeck
Like leaves of sass, we begin anew
Forged in 21st Century tears, an international joint venture
Chinese, American, but neither
Forgetting Eztra Pound but preserving his protease stripping of
The Waste Land to riddles
Preserving Eliot but damping the strings of the world guitar
Strumming cosmichords we penetrate the elite with poetic gifts that
Outstrip politics, transcending mutilated knowledge
Where matter rises like a Colossus to shake itself off
A dog-eared fable of empire no longer applies
The lies they told us about ourselves must die in paroxysms of glitter
Where the old man and the seizure's salad days are over, yet they begin a nude dessert
For the beauty of woman and man balks account
But the animals aren't bad either
And going beyond the well-thumbed Taroc pack Sylvia Plath
With Daddy kicked to a storm system of glitter dust
His big shoes to fill with dialectic healing bullets
His corkscrewed scenes inside the data mine drilling even deeper down
To the redemptive core that rises through kundalini ships crashed on the shores of time
To starboard, and matching hells in a wet loop
Ahab gives the orders to hunt for a new fish...

Chinese Translation by Ma Yongbo

惠特曼的衣袖

像沃尔特·惠特曼的衣袖
垂挂在舰尾甲板
如莽撞的叶子，我们重新开始
被二十一世纪的泪水锻造，这国际合资企业
中国的，美国的，却都不是
遗忘埃兹拉·庞德却保留他蛋白酶般
将《荒原》剥解成谜题的技艺
保存艾略特却调弱世界吉他的琴弦
我们拨动宇宙和弦，以超越政治的诗歌天赋
穿透精英，跨越残缺的知识
当物质如巨像升起，抖落自身
帝国那卷边的寓言已然失效
他们为我们编织的谎言必将在炫光的阵痛中死去
当老人与癫狂的青春岁月终结，却以赤裸甜点重新启程
因男女之美抗拒被丈量
但兽类也并非丑陋
超越西尔维娅·普拉斯那磨损的塔罗牌阵
将《爹爹》踢进闪尘的风暴系统
他遗留的大鞋填满辩证疗愈的子弹
数据矿脉中螺旋的场景向更深处钻探
直达救赎的核心——随昆达里尼航船
在时间海岸搁浅时升腾
向右舷，在湿漉的环中匹配地狱
亚哈船长下令猎捕新的鱼种......

The Last Room---to Old Aged Whitman
By Ma Yongbo

Daytime elapses. How can a life be entrusted
The dark suddenly descends outside
Raindrops hanging in rows on silver wire wait to fall
A small narrow room, quiet like a tomb
The raging swan is already dancing on another lake
Plastic wrapped wet flowers in the room
The ship-shape room, the crafty ship of old age

Silence hit the battle field with no gunpowder smoke
Violet and white lilacs seem to be blooming shyly
A floating log giving off fragrance
Which has gone through all seas and oceans
And many a deserted shore
Only for bringing the little soil in its crack, Ah
The nearly invisible tiny seed in the soil
To this room

You build darkened smooth wood of all times
Into rows of white bird nests upon the clips of wall
Those albatrosses, seagulls and swallows, those frigate birds
As well as nightingale defeating death and trampling hunger
A plaintively crying thrush not to be captivated
Despite wave keep surging towards the sky
Returning to the nests one by one, their songs pause for the moment
Pressing tight on the blazing thunder and resting upon your clip

How to start a life and how to end it
You’ve forgotten the first room, the constantly rocking cradle
In mother’s arms, nobody including you
Is able to know the last room, all your life
The last form of all your belief, love and hatred
This room is the altar-like beach rejected by Columbus
The land over your head is enclosing in

I see you in such a large chilly room
On a lonely little bed, with your big feet uncovered
Above black iron stove in the middle, the tin plate chimney
Reaching swirling up into the frost of still midnight like the obstinate neck of a swan
The backless chair, wood case used for dining and writing
Yet yourself is the most valuable piece of furniture, your sandy white body
Resembling a pine table bleached by scrubbing

You murmur words that startle even yourself
That are full of autocratic indisputability and noble arrogance
And directness and explicitness of the populace, mixed with mystery
You are the ship whipped by surge billows and meanwhile the billow itself
Life, let it be, who really understand it
As to love, you know for sure than anybody else,that companionate love
That welds the scattered lands together
And welds the lips of man and woman together at dawn

So laugh, you are simply contradictory, willful and stubborn
Thoughtful endurance, limitless mothering love and gentleness
Unshakeable frankness after penetrating into everything
You love all including even your enemy, how absurd
The boundless sympathy in your nature
Is actually originated from happiness of love you never experienced

It’s winter again, you will still slip back from cold to the classroom of
the same freezing cold and emptiness,go drink a cup of gin alone
So come on, my brave teacher of grey beard
Let’s make a deal, feed coal blocks into the furnace
Let the inner flames of crown shine and blaze
For the life I spent as unfulfilled as yours
Never convinced whether my poems have survived

Let’s drink from the jar as we used to
Drink from bottle, with looks of hawks
Because the daytime has passed, its glory has plunged down the clip
Because of your frustration and struggle, so we
The countless off springs of you the handsome bachelor
Will be able to let out distinct and powerful syllables
Let poems distilled from poems vanish forever
It’s because of you, saps of life
Will step on the path of gale painfully and ascend toward daybreak

Ma Yongbo's Poem in Chinese

最后的房间——致暮年的惠特曼

白昼消逝了。一生如何寄托
在突然暗下来的房间外面
雨滴一排排挂在银亮的铁丝上等待坠落
小小的狭长的房间，安静有如坟墓
那愤怒的天鹅已经在另一片水面上起舞
这房间里塑料裹着的湿漉漉的花
这船型的房间，这狡猾的老年之船

这没有硝烟的战场突然寂静下来
似乎有紫色的白色的丁香羞怯地开放
似乎有漂流木的芳香
它经过世界上所有的大洋
越过所有荒凉的海滩
只为把它裂缝中的一点点泥土，啊
还有泥土中微小得看不见的种子
带到这个房间

你用这属于一切时代的发黑的光滑的木头
在墙壁的悬崖上造了一排排白色的鸟巢
那些信天翁，海鸥和燕子，那些军舰鸟
还有那只战胜了死亡践踏着饥馑的夜莺
还有那只任海浪反复跃向天空
也始终捕捉不住的哀鸣的画眉
都一个个回到这巢穴，暂时停止歌唱
紧按住闪亮的雷霆，栖息在你的悬崖上

一生如何开始，又如何结束
你已忘记那最初的房间，那动荡不息的摇篮
母亲的怀腹，也没有任何人，包括你
能够知道那最后的房间，你全部生涯
全部信仰和爱恨的，最后的形式
这房间就是哥伦布被抛弃的祭坛般的海滩
你头上的大地正在闭合

我看见你在一个大大的寒冷的房间
一张孤零零的小床，你的大脚露在外面
房中央黝黑的铁炉子上白铁皮的烟囱
像天鹅执拗的脖子弯曲着伸向午夜寂静的严霜
一把没有靠背的椅子，吃饭写字用的木头箱子
而你自己，就是这一片贫穷景象中
最为贵重的家具，上下一片沙白的身躯
像一张因擦洗得发白的松木桌子

你咕哝着连你自己都吃惊的话语
它们充满专制式的不容置疑和贵族式的傲慢
又有平民式的直接和清晰，间杂着神秘
你就是波涛抽打的船，也同时是波涛本身
生活，且不去管它，又有谁能真正懂得生活
至于爱，你比任何人更明白，是爱，伙伴之爱
把分散的大陆焊接在一起
把男人女人黎明的嘴唇焊接在一起

嘲笑吧，你就是自相矛盾，任性，顽固
深思熟虑的忍耐，无限的母性般的爱和温柔
因洞察一切而坚定不移的坦率
你爱一切，甚至你的仇敌，真是悖谬啊
你的天性中那巨大的悲剧因素
却源自你从未享受过爱情的幸福

又是冬天了，你还会因为寒冷而溜回
同样寒冷空旷的教室独自去喝杜松子酒吗
那么来吧，我的灰胡子的勇气教师
我们来定个协议，我们把煤球再添进漆黑的炉膛
让它闪耀起内在王冠的火焰
为着我曾像你一样度过了失败的一生
从来不能确定我的诗，是否还活着

让我们依然像过去那样，从水缸里喝水
从瓶子里喝酒，带着野鹰般的神情
因为白昼已经消逝，它的光辉跌落悬崖
因为你的挫折和斗争，我们
你这漂亮的老鳏夫的无数后代
才能得以发出清晰有力的音节
才能让那从诗里蒸馏出的诗永远消失
正是因为你啊，生命的汁液
才能疼痛地踏着大风向着黎明上升

Copyright © 2026 Alex S. Johnson and Ma Yongbo
All Rights Reserved

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0H2LMJH6C/ref=

About the Authors

Alex S. Johnson is a disability rights advocate, author, journalist, songwriter, poet, editor, artist and publisher with Nocturnicorn Books. His numerous publications include Metal Hammer, Metal Maniacs, Bloodsongs, Bizarro Central, 13 Mynah Birds, Cease, Cows, and Horror Sleaze Trash. John Shirley, co-creator of Cyberpunk with William Gibson and co-author of the screenplay to The Crow (1994), dubbed him “the Baudelaire of our time, the poet of the underground.” He is best known as the author of the cult novel Jason X: Death Moon, an official New Line Cinema spinoff of the Friday the 13th franchise, which incorporates Burroughsian cut-up techniques. His upcoming books include The Junk Merchants 2: A Literary Tribute to William S. Burroughs, with an introduction by Poppy Z. Brite and featuring contributions from Poppy Z. Brite, Caitlin R. Kiernan, John Palisano, and David J. Haskins, a founding member of the iconic post-punk/Goth rock bands Bauhaus and Love and Rockets. Johnson resides in Sacramento, California, with his family.  

Ma Yongbo 马永波 (b. 1964), https://mayongbopoetry.wordpress.com/, has 7 published poetry collections. Ma Yongbo 马永波 is listed among the 100 famous contemporary Chinese poets since the 1920s. He is the leading poet-translator of Western postmodern poetry on the mainland, including works by Dickinson, Whitman, Stevens, Pound, Williams, and Ashbery. His translation of Moby Dick has sold over half a million copies. He teaches at Nanjing University of Science and Technology. Collected Poems of Ma Yongbo (four volumes, Eastern Publishing Centre, 2024), comprising 1600 poems, celebrates 40 years of writing poetry.

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