Wu-Tang Clan
(a pantoum, written in dactylic quadrameter)

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.

Man, I have been pretty emotionally and mentally tapped recently. I’ll take some time this weekend to recharge and get back to writing stuff that is more well thought out.

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.

Fell behind because I worked late then did my taxes until 12:30. So much hard work – and i still didn’t like the result! UGH!

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.)

As warships approach on the horizon,
he flees north toward the jungle with his wife
and children in tow. Not soldiers of
Hirohito’s army, they were never trained
to handle the stress of torture or

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.”

Keeping with my promise that weekends are for form poetry, today I’m writing a ghazal and yesterday it was a haiku. These are the only two forms of poetry that I know of that are not of European ancestry. I’m sure there are more, I’m not that familiar though.

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?”

Contradiction
(a haiku)

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.

Meet Me at the Racetrack, Betty

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?

When I started doing this poem every day thing, I promised myself I would not dis my own writing. But if i had not made that promise, I would be dissing this. Ugh. By the way, it’s a heavily modified acrostic with a structural curiosity I came up with a few seconds into writing.

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.

25 Random Things About Me (The Remix)

I came in the door, I said it before.
I cherish the twilight.
I’m from the school of hard knocks, sneak peeks and low blows.
I strive to be live because I got no choice.

I gotta stop when you trot my way.
I used to be number 10; now I’m permanent at 1.
I used to read Word Up! Magazine.
I don’t need your respect because I got it made.

I wish I had a quarter for all my people they slaughtered.
I like big butts and I cannot lie.
I got laughed at, I got chumped, I got dissed, I got upset.
I’m wrestling with words and ideas.

I couldn’t find a trace of equality.
I come with the beautiful things.
I got 99 problems.
I’m a poor man’s dream.

I got you stuck off the realness.
I got a whole lot to give, so I’ma give a little at a time.
I try to just throw it at you, determine your own adventure.
I sit alone in my four-cornered room staring at candles.

I saw life for what it’s really worth and took a step back.
I’m not insane; in fact, I’m kind of rational.
I got so much trouble on my mind.
I’m not like anyone else, and in your shoes I couldn’t be in.

And I’m gonna miss everybody.

In private my fingers coiled around cigarette filters,
highball glasses, and each other like priests
bent together in penance.
my private oxygen was tainted with smoke,
when I threw my mother’s car down residential streets
halfway drunk enough to pretend
I was James Dean,
Bruce Lee, or Bukowski.

But I was not a cracked and broken shell
nurturing a glorious soul
awaiting its own maturity. Not a cocoon, unhatched egg,
or whatever coming-of-age metaphor
the poet might prefer. I was just a terrible
role model for the youth I worked with; as I told them
to care about themselves, their families,
communities, I was doing none of it
in my own life. In a rush to be
worthwhile in someone’s eyes,
I made up stories about the future
I hoped they would recite at bedtime.

There is not enough life in life
to make it grander. Not enough life
in any man, that he can be who he claims to be.
After 30 years, I only hope each lie I tell
is less egregious than the last one.

Maybe that means I’m broken.

Dear Giles

I am writing you from a place you once lived, and seemed to really dislike. You’re gone, and I wonder if now you can see how much good we had here? Things are fine where I am; maybe better than you remember. I found that little bit of courage you swore I must have had, and I’ve been playing with it ever since.

The crabapple tree we used to eat off, where that Russian kid got beat up by his dad, that’s still here. It feels kind of out of place to me, but there it is on the side of the park without the fence. Still tall and fat and full of fruit as ever. Not everything blooms though.

Many people you used to know are no longer with us. There were the usual explanations: accidents, suicide, wrong attitudes at the wrong time, you know – everyone dies to soon. This may surprise you, but no, we have not carried that pain from year to year; we are stronger than you remember us.

Still, many of the people you loved are still as strong and vibrant as ever – and all awaiting your return. Like the way you hold onto the arms of your chair as your the tires beneath your plane skid to a stop on asphalt. Waiting. Not with hope or with fear, just waiting.

If nothing else, I hope life is easier for you where you live now, or that you learned how to live in the world you’re in – that you’ve figured out ignoring is not the same as forgetting.

I may or may not write you again. But don’t neglect to let someone know before you make your next trip back.