For a lifetime, this has been his team.
Seventeen championships – four of which he has seen – they are without peer.
An obsession for him: no matter where he has lived,
he dreamed imaginary ballgames, along with careers and families. Now the title
of “father” is a reality. There is no more time to dream: the effect
of being tethered to a spot on earth with his children. No, not Boston -

which is implacable – but actual concrete and soil. Where Boston
is just an idea, his children are real and teeming
with possibility. For his Celtics, he feels something to the same effect,
as every challenge flashes then slowly disappears.
Many doubt the Celtics are entitled
to this playoff run, just as he doubts he has earned the life he lives.

But then, this doubt is the reason he lives.
He questions his own memory – maybe because he’s from Boston.
The Celtics fan – once almost entitled
to success, if not in life, then of his team -
as a father now dances over midnights, peers
at each coming day, thinking of ways to make them perfect.

This June night, his hometown squad can affect
tomorrow. There are no religious icons here to believe
in, pray to – just a glowing television and yelps that pierce
the quiet hours before bed. Three miles from Downtown Boston,
this fan draws energy from the Celtics, and self-esteem
from his children fighting the intermittent tidal

waves of sleep and sleeplessness. No father is entitled
to a full night’s rest anyway. So why not let a game affect
him? The clock climbs over itself and his head teems
with more doubts. The playoffs don’t relieve
a father of his duties, but at least tonight in Boston,
the rules for fans usurp those for fathers – so it appears.

This man constantly departs. Reappears.
Sings children to sleep, screams silence at games, writes poems with no titles.
It has never been so good to be in Boston -
a lovely ugly setting, where home sometimes exists. It is perfect.
There may be other cities more enjoyable to live,
but his children are here in this city – and so is his team.

The City of Boston hopes Captain Paul Pierce
can help steer this magnificent team to another title -
if for no other effect than to remind us we’re alive.

Also, I know I did twelve and not the customary ten, but there’s no way I can possibly take any of these off. It was hard enough narrowing it down this far. I’ve included the approximate year I first heard the poem and my favorite line from each piece, but these are coming straight from memory – so don’t quote me on them.

12. “Listen Asshole” – Yellow Rage (2000)
It feels like a lifetime ago. When I first moved to DC right after college, I knew close to nobody – and I had no aspirations to take on spoken word as anything more than just something I did at bars every now and then, since I lived right off Black Broadway and there was no shortage of open mics a couple blocks from my apartment. But pretty soon I found myself part of a duo called re: verse, and we were one of three main API spoken word groups out that way. The other two were Feedback (who I’ll talk about later) from New York and Yellow Rage from Philly.

I don’t really know how we all connected, but folks from all three cities met up in 215 to do a little East Coast retreat and this was the first time I hear them do this ridiculous piece. It was like, yo, who’s gonna stop us now?

Favorite Line: I’m gonna fight with alla my might against motherfuckers who think I’m a white…girl. Watch my finger unfurrrrl…”

11. “Remembrance” – Taiyo Na (2000)
On to the aforementioned Feedback Poets. Taiyo was the baby of the bunch – so I was shocked when I saw this like 17 year old kid spit this amazing piece at the Asian American Writer’s Workshop open mic called (re)collection. It was the most succinct and touching rendition of a Japanese American history and future through its literature and music, done in a way that I guess I haven’t seen anyone else even attempt. Mas Yamagata backed him up on the bass.

Favorite Line: This ain’t just some Biz Mark shit; these lips are rocking a lost taiko

10. “The Last Words of a Roach, Underfoot” – El Guante (2009)
Dark Horse entry here. Everyone else on this list is someone I probably first met like – well – a long time ago. But I didn’t have the pleasure of sharing a stage with El Guante until this past year, and I have to say man I was astounded. This piece from the point of view of a cockroach made me feel like I should be writing a lot more.

In the hands of a lesser writer, this concept could have been corny. But he went in on it; honestly, it’s transcendent.

Favorite Line: You say…that life can be something greater than survival, but what could be greater than survival?

9. “Naming & Other Christian Things” – Roger Bonair-Agard (2003)
Roger probably does not know this, but he was the first established poet to actually pay money for my CD. I gladly accepted because ten dollars is ten dollars yo. But I didn’t know that a few years later when he’d be closing out the annual “Voice for the Voiceless” concert, he would unleash this monster of a poem that is about everything more than it is about anything. It was a relentless plea for self that resounded with everyone.

Favorite Line: I cannot summon the sympathy for Mary Magdalene, cannot help her weep tears of distress. Only wish I could retro activate a name change for her.

8. “Sometimes Silence is the Loudest Kind of Noise” – Bassey Ikpi (2000)
The first night I met Bassey in New York, it was a night to remember for many reasons. But the thing about B was that we both wrote from the same place; to me, it didn’t matter her subject matter because every poem she wrote felt like it came from inside of me. She wasn’t just sharing pieces of her soul, but she was identifying pieces of mine.

This piece was around the time when I was clumsily trying to disengage with rhyme schemes in a way that felt natural, and was only marginally successful. Bassey had this piece that all that in a way that was emotional but not burdensome, pleasant but not trite, familiar but not cliche. ANd she lands the piece perfectly in my soft spot.

Favorite Line: Like if you get lost, just stand there until someone finds you, and someone will always look for you, and someone will always miss you.

7. “Chasing Bruce Lee” – Beau Sia (2001)
Someone told me before I saw him do this: “Beau has a new piece about Bruce Lee” and so, I guess I expected some biographical poem with a complete filmography or something, I dunno. So, when he did it, I was so touched – the feeling so familiar. You know, Bruce Lee is the idealized Asian (American) male by many of us, so by definition there was plenty of admiration to go around.

But Beau cut through that to carve a new definition of himself in that frame. Bruce Lee was all that he was and more, but also less. Those of us who are lucky to stick around will have many more chances than he did to redefine ourselves in concert or in opposition to what the world sees us as. That’s life he’s talking about here.

Favorite Line: I don’t know if I’m strong enough to stamp ‘SELF’ on everything in my world.

6. “Acid Trip Tango” – Malaya Arevalo (2000)
There’s no heartbreak poem that breaks a heart as much as this does. Mad hard to find words for this one.

Favorite Line: So close to New Jersey skyscrapers that if I don’t watch my aim, I might just break a window. So close to you that if I don’t watch my hands, I might just break my heart.

5. “Real Karaoke People” – Ed Bok Lee (2002)
Bao had told me about this poem before I saw it, but didn’t tell me the concept or the form. Just that it was one of the five best spoken word pieces he had ever seen in his life. So when Ed showed up once for the open mic before I featured in New York, I was kinda ready for it.

But then I found out I was not at all ready for it. Just talking about karaoke can almsot be a punchline to mainstream America – so why are our families so into it? Ed explores teh delicate beauty of an immigrant singing a song written and originally sung by other people, for other people, ina a place not their home or birthplace, in a language that is their second or third, at a time of night the would normally be sleeping – or working. Is there meaning in that?

How could there not be?

Favorite Line: Real karaoke people know past 4AM, English can be only half a home.

4. “By-Standing: The Beginning of an American Lifetime” – Kelly Zen-Yie Tsai (2009)
I think Kelly had this out on the Youtubes for a while now. But I’ll admit upfront I don’t watch the Youtubes for poetry; I might seek out sports highlights or clips of pandas doing panda things and occasionally a tutorial of how to fix a leaky toilet and such. But I’m not really a Youtubes guy.

So I didn’t actually see this piece until 2009 ECAASU at Rutgers in New Jersey. And even then, it was her produced video version of it that was screening, and not Kelly performing it live – but I still got to give it run on this list for two reasons: 1. This piece was part of Kelly’s performance even if it was pre-recorded; and 2. It’s fukcing amazing. Told in vignettes, the poem laces itself through every fold in your mind until the end, where she lands the piece by pulling it closed. Even thinking back to it as I type, I can feel it’s getting hard to breathe.

Favorite Line: No war.

3. “In Front of the Class” – Bonafide Rojas (2003)
I admit I was a little drunk when I first saw Bonafide do this, but that wasn’t the reason it brought tears to my eyes. many spoken word poets teach, right, you all have seen it. Not everybody is great at it, not everybody likes it, but still most of us do it.

I honestly have never seen Bone teach, so I don’t know how he does, but I have known dude for a decade and I can attest to the fact that there’s nobody I’ve ever met who needs to write poetry as much as he does. And in this piece he lays it all out there. Just phenomenal.

Favorite Line: I want to live. I want to love.

2. “Signs of God” – Ishle Yi Park (2004)
I very distinctly remember the first time I saw Ishle do this piece: it was at Vassar College, and me and Ed Bok Lee and her were doing a little show for like students who were there for a summer session or something. Whatever the reason, Ed, Ishle, and myself were in Poughkeepsie doing a show in the summer. And when Ishle read this piece, I was taken away, I felt like I couldn’t love a poem as much as I loved this one. I think I told her that too.

Then after she released her CD that year or maybe the following, this peice was on it. But this time it had this beautiful Spanish guitar underneath that accentuated the beauty in the accidental, the order of chaos, the idea that there are always more reasons for hope than there are reasons against. Damn.

Favorite Line: I want a chorus of loved ones; I want someone to hold my hand.

1. “Quincy Nguyen” – Bao Phi (2007)
It’s weird that I could work Prince into a list about spoken word isn’t it? But this piece from the homey Bao is just perfect to me. His character uses the music of Prince to convince himself he’s beautiful despite all the evidence to the contrary. And I guess when it comes down to it, it just reminds me of me.

Favorite Line: Prince gave him the power: secret of survival for small boys odd when young yet destined for futuresexy.

Letter from a Bear

Every time one of us
kills one of you. You
come back with nets, and
tranquilizers, and shotguns
to avenge your brother.

And you say it’s to keep
your innocent families
safe. So we don’t roam -
aggressive mother bear – in
your comfortable
suburban dwellings,

break the illusion that
your place at the top
of the food chain
was earned, maul
your precious children.

Well, what about my children?

Who ever thought
what it meant for us to have
to see you in our homes,
your loud talking
scaring us from our sleep.
Do you know how terrifying
it is to see your tracks
next to ours? My ancestors

were murdered by yours.
Sometimes skinned.
Sometimes the focal point
of your smiling
vacation photos. Sometimes
hauled on the backs
of your trucks -

to show off the danger
you managed to avert in the woods.

The danger.

As if you weren’t the
one with the shotgun. As if
it was your children’s
heads hanging on our walls.
As if we ever attacked
you unprovoked.

We have been killed by you
for centuries. Over and over.
You’ve destroyed our home and
you insist on dragging your
broods through it
for a weekend getaway. Don’t

you get it? You are
latecomers to this party.
We have the claws and teeth
and natural distrust of outsiders.
We are supposed to kill you. And

that doesn’t change just
because you bring guns here.

Every time you see me, I am
coming for you. Take that as fair
warning. Come unarmed in here
again. I dare you.

I know I’ll eventually
die by your hands,
so I pray for
the chance to send more
of your brothers home without
clothes, and limbs, and faces.
More reasons for you to hunt
me. And declare revenge
in their names.

Magical, coo the uninitiated. The week ends the way
lyrics begin in three minute-long pop songs. Celebratory: as if

melodies were incidental, meaning were optional, and
rhymes and catchy hooks told less than the whole story. The crowd

dances to the rhythm of each others breathing. I hear my story from her throat.

Click the following links for a fuller context of this piece:

• Prompt! The Research Edition
• East Meets Words Meets Three Years

By the way, the American sentence is a poetic form invented by Allen Ginsberg.

A Last Great
(an American sentence)

The trees dance joyously outside; their shadows thrash each other against the window like drunks on Lansdowne.

Crumbling paper
walls, as frequent as
confused squawks
from a flock of
lost ducks.

Abandoned dirty hood scene,
poles top-heavy
with light.

Night falls, they
lean against
each other. Come

out and play,
he says, with
his chin on his chest;

the soles of his sneakers
lightly graze
the floor. A
grown man walks into the
sunset, back bent,
his shadow sliding

in the opposite
direction. Much of
the film is shown
in silence. The
private journals of
gods are misleading;

the lies they tell themselves
end up as entries
in his own. He crouches
behind his own fingers,
ready to slay sometimes.

The elderly forget
their own names.

Clothes and Shoes

His pipe was broken.
They blamed me, the help, so I packed my
clothes and shoes to leave on foot.
Even if I had – and I did, but they
didn’t know, so – if I had broke his pipe
or broke her mirror, or whatever
prized possessions, if I burned their robes
into smoke, or dropped their old hair
combs, grinding them into frozen stone,
so what? I never hurt them as people.
But in that moment, they made sure to keep me
underfoot. They tore my jacket on the way out,
I was nothing to them; less than that,
I was a Chinese boy – maybe sent to be
her work from God. Challenging her
to turn me civilized.

He’s tired of running backwards.
All his toes have done is ache,
and the muscles in his arches
feel like snakes in mating dance.
He barely even knows now
what he started running for –
let alone in reverse. Soon he’ll stop.
But there’s motive behind his actions:
he’s seen the future, and tries his best
to avoid that life, so it’s up and down these
city stairs and his neighborhood slopes.

He hasn’t fallen very often,
and all in all feels pretty good.
He isn’t even wearing sneakers,
but wearing loafers hasn’t hurt.
But so far, his whole reason
for starting this whole project now,
doesn’t seem quite as bad
as he imagined then.
There was motive behind his actions:
now he looks foolish, but it’s too late
to avoid that so he may still keep going.
People staring. Make a decision.

Coyotes

“I’m not going to be very judicious,
I’m afraid,” as he struggled to haul kindling
to build a fire that night during his watch.
“They’ve run across here before – like birds, like a
line through one right through to the next one;
it’s hard to know which one to follow.” Memories
of their blighted homes floated behind his statement.
His shotgun leaned against his shoulder with a secret to tell.
“Areas…” he said, before rethinking his point.
“This is home to us, not to them,” he continued.
“If we could live peacefully together, I wouldn’t
bother being here,” as he ran
a finger down the seam of his jeans,
tracing the scar underneath, that he earned from
the last time he encountered his prey.

Broken Metaphor

Romance is a used pot of oil for deep frying,
holding onto flavors of past lovers.
The oil I use is suited for drinking.

With odor like the first step in the front doors
of a downtown late night diner. A reveler tastes
the pasture in his beef; the pickup bell sings muffledly
under the smoke of drunk conversations;
heat slides through nostrils and mouths
as air, proving more essential than oxygen; as
the lights bathe the room in dramatic white shadow.

In this kitchen, all the help bang elbows and egos
writing a melody that sounds the way
canned tomatoes taste.
Three years into college, I’m here to impress her:
the woman I might marry.

The oil is not suited for drinking.

The napkin dispenser is empty, I notice,
has this ever happened before?
I tap a rescue message with my pinky nail
against Formica, because if I live this down
I might find rhythm in music again.

It’s not called crying, it’s a teardrop;
everything I say is unnecessary.
The contained tantrum of pride
dropped its arms in the parking lot
at the end of a long day. The
flashing neon is childhood, a reassuring hour
in the bath, a bedtime song.

I break through the glass window without a sound,
pick up the pieces and return them to the pane.

The Big Guy is about to try something new.

In adulthood,
when there are no more problems,
we’ll be back here again, triumphant as game show winners.

The regal pool of ketchup wipes itself off the plate,
reveals skids of oil I forgot were there.
Eating to live is a way to survive, but not for us.

Ce qu’elle a dit, ce soir la?
The cup of coffee takes a final drag of
cigarette, coughs out a teaspoon of sugar.
The asphalt outside is wet from rain or
late night street-cleaning; we haven’t noticed.
As we stumble off the curb, we step
over a trail of romance before the sun rises.

A siren cuts through the fog, echoing. Cold
through sickly branches, the neighbor kids
hold snowballs behind their heads.
Shall we dance? Her eyes close, breathing
becomes free. Fade to black over
sounds of dinner.
A gloved hand pats the animal’s back,
returns her soul for another day. There are
ways to do good, without being good.
A defined moral is a dandelion picked in spring,
and kept until next year. Living room glare
flashes off and on; this is surely the 1980s,
when life was learned between commercials.
It can be hard not to seek an end to summer.

In mirrors, her reflection’s hard to read:
her eyes deceptively shine star and sun.
As rubies do, her mouth drives him to greed:
march strong to mines, then turn as if to run.

The actors know she’d never learn to sing
the arias that others write alone.
Requests are never taken by the king,
except when Padma deigns to steal the throne.

A fiction writer (who gets paid to dream)
in fantasy, should hardly dare to dwell.
Reality creates a simple scene:
she left him plainly, reason dares to tell.

She doesn’t mind to hang her heart in frame,
but lotus flowers bloom within her name.

Ghostface and Rae seemed to laugh at their friends sometimes;
fight scenes from movies made great introduction joints.
Doubtlessly, GZA was lyrical champion;
all of the Clan aimed to build their own universe

Fight scenes from movies made great introduction joints;
U-God used voices, but RZA used music too.
All of the Clan aimed to build their own universe:
Five percent, Shaolin kung fu, numerology.

U-God used voices, but RZA used music to
build up the world over which Masta Killa watched.
Five percent, Shaolin kung fu, numerology,
Socrates, all of them influenced Deck’s own life

Our world: the world over which Masta Killa watched,
doubtlessly, GZA was lyrical champion.
Ol Dirty Bastard did influence Deck’s own life,
Ghostface and Rae seemed to laugh at their friends sometimes.

In other news, I’m still two days behind in Project Poem-A-Day. And even though I wasn’t planning to, I may end up posting two make-up poems since it is the weekend and I drank too much coffee. Plus, I am having some fun forcing myself to explore forms and meter.

So what did you do this weekend?
I explored forms and meter.

Open Letter to Asian Students at Tufts University

I know we are all good people.
We all want to make sure we abide by some societal norms,
the ones that keep the peace,
make us respectable -
so they can’t just refuse all our requests
whenever they want.

But sometimes, you just gotta beat a dude’s ass.

Anyway it’s still April 14 in California, so it still counts for my poem for the day.

April 14
Are these bills?
No they’re taxes, do you know what taxes are?
No.
Since we make money here, the government asks us to pay a little bit to them every year?
What for?
To help give some money to your school and other schools. To fix holes in the streets. To help old people when the get sick.
So it’s like you gotta make a deal so they can give money back to the community?
Yeah. (Even though I hate paying them, you just gotta pay them. Because no one person is more important than the community.)

escape. There was, of course, resentment
from their island home, thrown their direction.
This family, a band of colonizers; maybe
living peacefully here was still an act
of violence. There will be too many stories

to tell: grandfathers who exploded hand
grenades against their chests while their
descendents held them tight, braced for
impact; infants thrown against mountainsides
to save them; young mothers who closed

their eyes as they walked off the edge of
the cliff, straight drop into the ocean. There
will be no memorial to the story of his family,
except decayed floating corpses. Reasons
for war are too numerous; he thinks:

“We are the reasons against; the ones
nobody remembers.”

Anyway, this weekend, the pieces are also about Boston Progress Art Collective, a group I am a part of, and that I think is recently doing some really grea and new things. Keep an eye out!

Progress
(a ghazal)

Till now, we only lived inside this world for us;
a passion for the lives we might create for us.

An understanding of the journey never clear
as destination; shaded was the road for us.

Do we believe that art is for the chosen few?
In Boston, progress never comes too soon for us.

Collectively, the masses – unwashed citizens –
continue singing, not for gawking crowds – for us.

No borders now; no line between the audience
and actors: “step inside the door, perform for us!”

In passing, strangers nod each others way, perhaps
they’d try to do the things that we have done for us.

Those people who would normally consider us
the undesirables, might show some care for us.

It’s not for their approval that we live like this;
for once, they’re incidental – afterthoughts for us.

If love is revolutionary, then Giles asks:
“What more could Progress do to make it real for us?”

Best April Fools joke:
Destroy the register; we’ll
really make more scratch.

I was late with this. It’s a haiku. It’s also related to Boston Progress.

So you think we should adopt names that you could deal with more readily here?

“Here” meaning Athens, Texas,
meaning an hour and a half southeast of Dallas
meaning “Don’t mess with” our state
where the good citizens give their lives to defend their borders
against more hired help, where “Proud to be an American” means
“proud to be from Texas,” where God only blesses the good, right, and mighty white,
where secession is always on the table, with a wink, a nod,
a quick smile, and a shoulder nudge while you flip the switch on another state execution,
you might as well be kicking out the chair.

This is Texas where fruit don’t get no stranger.

You think we should adopt names that you could deal with.

“You” being Betty Brown, elected Representative to the Texas State Legislature,
being of sound mind and body, being that mind and body probably sound like
obstacles, like shit that just be getting in the way of you having it easy.
Like being the only white lady in the world who has the balls to stand up to this
rising menace, fuck a PATRIOT Act, this here ain’t acting. This is Betty Fucking Brown
being the baddest-ass representative your citizens ever seen.

And so what that your name gets you easily confused with other good ol’ white ladies,
as long as it’s easy to pronounce.

We should adopt names that you could deal with.

“We” like Asian. Immigrant.
Like dirty, like clicking our tongues in a language that sounds like no feelings,
like simply surviving, like eating rats and dogs, and roadkill and watercress we picked from the ground
off the side of the highway, like we are movie villains, are serial killers,
like we been going crazy a lot in the news lately,
like it seems there’s something we need here that we are not getting,
like what is making us rebel? Like how many times
do we have to change our names?
If I’m not mistaken, we already done that.

You said we should adopt a religion that made us civilized and drop our superstitions,
adopt a language that sounded musical – not mathematical,
like we all been getting advice from you for hundreds of years, and still trying
to catch up, and still losing out because
we don’t know how to play this game. Even when we start winning,
the rules be changing behind us.

Adopt names that you could deal with more readily? Word?
Wouldn’t it be easier to just give us license plates to wear around our necks?

Train Tracks

Given a chance to live once, I have
quietly opted to waste it, as though I might
discover another lifetime
hidden in locked drawers with
mementos that never made it
to the bedroom shelves: bruised
ego yellowing at the corners,
swallowed confessions, heavy-eyed fears
I held in my hands for two decades.

I hold two decades in my hands
every evening, splayed flat on my stomach -
I have been here before; my pillow:
broken pedestal, and my own head
balanced crookedly atop, I fight
heaviness above my eyes, because
the end of the day is so much easier;
the beginning is just lost time.

Lost in thought too often, I have begun
to find comfort in rhythm, to find rhythm
in routine, to find routine in the scenes
outside my bedroom window; the horizon
is a predator, and I think I would
like to move on from here to
wherever the sun rises after I do.

Everywhere is sunrise; do I
need to be reminded that the world
sees chance where I see trusses?

See what I trust to chance:
everything – no illusion
of control, no reasonable path to blame,
no recourse for spoiled plans; and
nothing – no certainties but one:
I have one chance to live, that is the given.