A Thursday Poem

Bully w/ Blue Eyes & a Gun.

Dear Fong,
I bet right now you're wishing you had been gay
and bullied
and killed yourself--
made the choice to die--
because maybe then
Fong Lee would be in the papers,
your tormentors might see justice,
and Mr. Sulu would have to remember which face he wears first.
I bet right now you're wishing you had a closet to hide in,
to protect you from the bullets,
lock out Hatred with a badge and a gun--
but you can't take your face off
and bulleyes are too often brown eyes.

You didn't have a choice in dying--
there are no hotlines for kids who like to ride their bikes with friends
and your roommate didn't film it when who you really were--
your colors--
drained out of you from thirteen holes
onto North Minneapolis.

Banana, Split (revised)

She knows all the words to Weezer,

was Go-Go Yubari for Halloween

and, in her white-washed mind, her chipmunk cheeks are the

the hottest you’ve ever seen

dressing like a school girl-dragon lady-

ex-Asian hyping the exotic East,

Hangul hurts her hands

so she settles for (what she’s pretty sure is) kanji

Reclaims her hanguk saram handle

But failure by any other name

still reeks like rotting from the inside out--

diseased with something awful, incurable

no matter how many yellow-fevered topicals

coat that vapid pout.

Hitchhiking--no, sidestepping--toward self discovery

or identity-reclamation all for popularity--

she breaks a sweat, remains half a hemisphere away--

grows Madame Butterfly wings

but stays grounded, West of anything worth finding,

blathering on to white boys about how much she’s already found,

pukes out a drunken, broken hangul greeting

and doesn’t understand that

solidarity does not make us friends.

She’s unable to speak--no, unable to be,

all her heart’s sob stories about hidden bloodlines

language lost, and guilty conscience

all turn to pathetic cries for sympathy.

The day can’t come soon enough

when she brings those bloodlines out of hiding,

lets her wrong turns pool beneath her

and still can’t tell

if our stories run the same color.

More Hatin'

NOTE: Personally, I get way more pissed off about ignorant people of color who ought to know better not knowing better and, in doing so, making us all look bad. This is especially true with other adoptees who "consider themselves white." Shut up; you are not white. Stop embarrassing yourself and everyone else by rejecting who you are. Most of the time, I just feel sorry for people but there's this one person I know who just pisses me off because of 1. how misinformed she is and 2. how loud she is about it.

I should also mention that I am not claiming to be any kind of authority on self-discovery or identity issues but I feel we can all agree that there is something very wrong when a Korean adoptee dresses up like a Japanese school girl at a party and doesn't understand why none of the other Asian people want to talk to her.

This is still a draft.

Banana, Split

She knows all the words to Weezer,

was Go-Go Yubari for Halloween

and, in her white-washed mind, her chipmunk cheeks are the

the hottest you’ve ever seen

dressing like a school girl-dragon lady-

ex-Asian hyping the exotic East

Hangul hurts her hands

so she settles for (what she’s pretty sure is) kanji

Reclaims her hanguk saram handle

But a piece of shit by any other name

still reeks like she’s rotting from the inside out--

diseased with something awful, incurable

no matter how many yellow-fevered topicals

coat that vapid pout.

Hitchhiking--no, sidestepping--toward self discovery

or identity-reclamation all for popularity--

she breaks a sweat, remains half a hemisphere away--

darling, you’ve got to go down the road,

not cross the street

and, remember, before you puke out

that drunken, broken hangul greeting at a party

that solidarity doesn’t mean

I want to stand next to you.

I’ve seen Japanophile white girls less offensive than she is--

all alternating between being full of shit and white-boy dick,

cleavage over-represented like adopted names in suicide rates

trying too hard to carve her story into a history she doesn’t get

when she’d be better off slitting her wrists into the statistics she hasn’t seen.

Bottom-feeding, sub-human, double-race-traitor, wannabe,

I don’t care about how hard you had it,

Mom was too distant, Dad had a whore-habit--

She’s unable to speak--no, unable to be,

all her heart’s sob stories about hidden bloodlines

language lost, and guilty conscience

all turn to pathetic cries for sympathy.

The day can’t come soon enough

when she opens up a vein or two,

lets her complaints pool beneath her

and still can’t tell

if our blood runs the same color.

Another number

If my murder is called manslaughter, let me take some solace in being a man.

Initial 8 Deal/Who is still reading this?

Initial 8 Deal: I have 8 copies of Confrontations: A Skull & Poems Reader to sell to the hardcore fans. In each of these initial eight, I will scrawl a different poem of mine unincluded in the anthology--devaluing the publication significantly. First come, first serve.

Hatin'

This is a very rough first draft completed a few minutes ago in response to annoying poetry and poets that I hope never to write or become.

"Rock Bottom" or "Nothing Good Has Ever Been Written in a Coffeehouse."

I don’t write poems so much as

loaded prose with line breaks

to break with other writers writing,

trying to rhyme or protest problems

that they think they see through

unwashed bangs to get some spotlight

while they read their poems about injustice--

Washed up thinking it makes them so fresh and so clean clean

blasting ripped off hip hop chops amidst all their stagnant energy.

Not so eloquent but the message is clear--is it? whatever.

Like “Raise your fist and get behind the rhyme,

rep that solidarity; your eyes and hair and life’s like mine

so buy my book!!”

They suck it up but still can’t bare those teeth

past reactionary sneering, yelling shit nobody cares about,

put too much faith in bleeding hearts like it’s something we should care about

and scar those painted nails on purpose, break their own hearts to wear that pout

so pretty under Zelda hair and irony.

But you wear it well in coffeehouses

looking deep with pregnant pauses,

affectations for a round of applause--better yet, a hand job

keep those fingers doing something

(they sure as hell aren’t writing)

Energize your bunny keep on going going going

like your poem will sputter something if you keep adding adding adding

words, lines, and paragraphs

like a stone soup,

you’ve hit rock bottom

but keep digging.

Thursday Poem

Also here.

"A (very) Loose Reflection on SB1070 by an Arizona Poet" or "Jan Brewer Doesn't Care About Your Faggy Poem"

Gonna write a story about a poet that mattered--

poems were more than performance pieces

playing for that pussy--

wrote real protests, rhyming prose

and politicians listened,

traded out Andrew Jacksons for poet-influenced decisions

Gonna write a story about a poem that made a difference--

line breaks broke police lines better than bottles could have

and a rhyme scheme at play with no ulterior motive

like “I just came to read my poem

with no rising inflections, no silly affectations,

just feeling”

Gonna write a story about getting lost in my stories--

wrapped up in pages,

curled up cover to cover

and sweet sugar plum dreams

that poems are more than catharsis

for under-rep’ed frustration,

fragments of community

or a voice for the voiceless.

Barroom Revelation

I'm going to put this out here: it is almost impossible to tell a stranger "I am writing a book" without sounding like a tremendous asshole.

TS and Maggie

Yet another blog

Love The Cold Shoulder but hate the idea of Snugglekitty? Aching for new poems? Then tune in every Thursday for new or workshopped work from me and other writers--most of whom are probably better than I am. Follow us!!

Anyone* Can Grow Up to be President

And there's those times when something that actually is racist happens and you're like, "Wow. Not cool" and whoever you're with is all, "oh, lighten up."

Snugglekitty update

Figuring out layout for the stories, trying to decide if it's worth including pictures, realizing I need to complete some stuff, realizing other stuff is crap.

If you believe this will actually get published some day, clap your hands!!

Fall asleep to cop dramas

Here's another unrevised NaPoWriMo poem about trying to get out of bed in the morning.

4/14 Every Other Tuesday

And on those dull days,

those sad days, those days that start too early

with the morning rush toward nothing,

highlighting time spent wasting

time

like playing at poems or soundbites

to reaffirm that now,

that now is the prime of my life

so I should get off my ass and

build something that outlives me.

But maybe, if I lay here long enough,

let myself dissolve, decompose,

just sink away,

maybe then I could just call

this patch of ground

my own.

Em

Drunk in the parking lot of Grumpy's--Roseville, 2008. We were like 80% sure we woke up the occupants of this RV.

NaPoWriMo

Ran my mouth and ended up doing this writing challenge for National Poetry Month with one of my writer role models. It's like when you're a kid and you really want to sit at the grown up table for Thanksgiving and then you get there and everything everyone is talking about is beyond you because you're a kid and you're seven and you don't know why everyone looks so unhappy--not to say Christy is unhappy. Actually, she's probably way more upbeat than I am. And more talented.

So I have begun another month of trying to produce something creative on a daily basis but this time it is poetry--something I find way harder to do well--so I'm expecting way more misfires. I invite you all to join me.

4/4

She’s not his real sister

but on bored nights, they pass for twins;

Soft handed, callous kids

whose only steadfast commitment is malice

rooted in love or solidarity

And the love they say they share isn’t

nearly as thick as blood--

metaphorical or otherwise--

because he beats the cock’s crow

by hours when

he’s the first to admit

she’s not his real sister

Just family who doesn’t mind him

starting his dying early--

even joins him when the weather’s right

or threatens to slice him into high gear.

She’s mostly joking, he can see it

in the grin behind her sneer

and these are the times when

she is closest to

being his real sister.

Even when my shining armor's scuffed

"Don't slump, baby, keep that chin off your chest."

$20 for 6000 words

Behind schedule on Snugglekitty but it isn't all from slacking off. I'm working on entering a short story contest. More on this later.

Soft Handed, Callous

When I was in high school, our youth pastor told us about the summers he spent working construction to make ends meet. He would put in these long shifts carrying heavy things in the heat that kept him behaving himself since it was like a preview of the Hell he believed there was. He told us that, to cool off, what he would do is go sit in the porta-potty where the heat was intensified and the baked shit hung thick in the air. He would sit there for a few minutes and then go back to work feeling refreshed because, the air outside seemed cleaner and the 102 degrees didn't seem so bad next to the 115 in the plastic box.

I'm trying to figure out if there's a way I can use this method to increase my ability to channel that raw emotion I keep hearing about into writing. Is a porta-potty analogous to a passionate but short-lived relationship?

On a related note, there are times I wonder what the context was when someone uttered the words "true love always finds a way" because no one separated from what they think is their true love can be that optimistic.

Or maybe I'm just out of my element.

More Like a Tommy Gun

"FIVE CHAMBERS OF DICK."

-Jon Stewart on Chatroulette.

On Count of Three

I'm working really hard not to turn into the kid who writes poems that glorify the working class while he listens to NPR but, dammit, I've listened to Fresh Air twice now in as many days and I have a crush on Terry Gross.

I've written stories and stories and poems and poems about the perfect ways I could fall in love and none of them came true. So now I'm writing stories and poems about the ways I don't want to lose my parents in the hopes the same holds true.

I'll Die Trying

Haiku for the Economist

They say "words are cheap."

My book costs $90;

Veblen is my boy.

I Ain't Got Time To Bleed

The (almost) final draft of this piece in which I raised Mrs. Baker from the dead. My mommy said it was good.

Daisy Buchanan Can Eat a Dick

In my younger, more vulnerable years, my high school English teacher gave me some advice. I was thinking really seriously about going to college to study management but Mrs. Baker told me to follow my heart because “college is not a trade school.” My academic elitism get the better of me and, when my more pragmatic but less interesting relatives asked why I was studying English, I would declare “trade school is for a recession!”

Then I graduated in a recession and the books I had read did me little good as I drifted from commission job to telephone sales to temp work and back. Kids who had learned trades were employed, married, had children and lives while I crisscrossed the country, building up more debt than life experience in meaningless jobs with pay as miniscule as the impact I made on the world.

The morning I laid, staring at the ceiling, wondering what kept me beating on, a boat against the current, borne ceaselessly back into mediocrity and failed expectations, I remembered the punch line to all of it: That teacher, Mrs. Baker, lost her job a year before I graduated. Last I heard, she was working as a cashier at Walmart. I call that one a draw.

March On, Revision!

Let's celebrate the month of March with a mean little story I wrote while I was feeling down about being an unemployed 20something with writer aspirations.

Daisy Buchanan Can Eat a Dick

In my younger, more vulnerable years, my high school English teacher gave me some advice when I was thinking really seriously about going to college to study management. Mrs. Baker told me to follow my heart because “college is not a trade school.” I let my academic elitism get the better of me and, when my more pragmatic relatives who were living comfortably in what seemed like boring existences asked why I was studying English, I would declare “trade school is for a recession!”

Then I graduated in a recession and the books I had read gave me little solace as I drifted from commission job to telephone sales to temp work and back. Kids who had learned trades were employed, married, had children and lives while I crisscrossed the country, building up more debt than life experience in forgettable, meaningless jobs with pay as miniscule as the impact I made on the world.

The morning I lay, staring at the ceiling, wondering what kept me beating on, a boat against the current, borne ceaselessly back into mediocrity and failed expectations, I remembered the punch line to all of it: That teacher, Mrs. Baker, took her own life two years after I left for college because the cancer spread and, while fulfilling, her job as a teacher did not provide her with the means to effectively combat the sickness. I call that one a draw.

It was from a deal with the Devil

The month of February is almost done and I can say that I significantly failed in my goal to write something new every day. Well, perhaps not significantly. In any case, I built some fairly sturdy launch pads so there's an increasing chance that Snugglekitty won't be a pile of shit. To celebrate, here's yet another unrevised, rough draft of a piece that ultimately might not even go in the book.

2/27 No Title

When Sarah was very little, she had a sickness that grew from her crippled left leg, left her other limbs twisted and deformed. It kept her in and out of wheelchairs until she was seven and the doctors decided it would be best to amputate the leg before the sickness could twist her limbs further. Long summers in the hospital were passed with books about princesses who were swept away by their Prince Charmings, mounted atop white horses and Sarah wished that could be her life.

Years passed and Sarah’s mind grew while her body remained a husk, twisted against itself, against her. Her friends saw past this and loved the girl with the gentle smile whose eyes, smile were a window to her imagination and Sarah could see her stories played out in her friends’ relationships while she read in her room--not always alone; sometimes, when her arms ached, her nurse read to her, chaperoned her love affair with fiction.

The summer after her sophomore year, Sarah met Jesse and one look into his brown, meaningful eyes told her she had found the Prince Charming from her books. Then Sarah began to write. Poems and short stories about the imprisoned princess set free by True Love. A glance down at her broken body would bring her back to the world. How could he love this--lump of flesh?

On days she saw him, though, her hope in Love’s long shot was restored--he was gentle, kind, made her smile, loved her stories, asked for more. And, one day, sitting in the park together in the shade, he told her sheepishly that he had feelings for someone. Sarah’s books had taught her how to play it coy and she probed gently, her heart beating inside her broken chest, longing for the words it’s you.

And, as if to acknowledge how much time she had spent in books, the world played a little word joke on her: it’s your nurse.

It all floats

There was that day when the oceans rose and flooded everything and drowned everyone and the last two people left were an environmental activist and a racial justice advocate and the racial justice advocate said to the environmental activist "well, I guess you feel stupid for trying to stave off the inevitable" and the environmental activist replied "the joke is on you; the sea equalized everyone better than you ever could."

No Chaser

"No Chaser," the Josh Hackett project will be officially released for sale this Saturday. Josh the Fiery Soul will read selections as will other members of Skull & Poems. Chase this reading with a high five!

Groundswell Coffee (corner of Hamline & Thomas), 7pm

Saturday, February 13, 2010

Plastics

I had two false starts today--the kind where I was like a page in and then thought to myself "this is boring and shitty and not worth revising into something mediocre." I'm much more okay with this draft and, while I'm not going to post every draft of I produce on here, this is a victory over the sub-par free-writes from earlier today. I should add that I plan to keep sentimentality to a minimum.

2/10 Flash Memoir ("Maybe Boo Radley Had the Right Idea")

Aunt Jan sent me a Power Rangers action figure for Christmas when I was twelve because dad had told her I liked “action figures.” He didn’t specify what kind (Star Wars) so, Aunt Jan, all the way out in Ohio, picked one she thought I would like. It maybe wasn’t my first choice of toy but I had a very inclusive community of Star Wars action figures in 1998 so the Red Ranger found a place in my rogue’s gallery of aliens and bounty hunters.

I have a set of oil pastels Aunt Dot sent me from Kentucky when I was nine. I drew her a picture once when I was maybe five and she said it looked “just perfect” framed next to her Calder print. It wasn’t one of those big, extensive pastel sets (it just had the eight colors main colors of the color wheel) but it came with this little booklet about blending the colors to make those eight into eighty-eight.

For every Christmas until I was fourteen, Uncle David sent me a book he thought I would like. My childhood bookshelf is full of Milne, Christie, Doyle, and Stevenson--books I regret not reading as soon as the wrapping paper was off but, for a lot of those years, I was working on building and playing with that inclusive community of Star Wars action figures; I’ve always favored the instant gratification of a plastic spaceship.

Christmas of 2009 was the first year I received more gift cards than than anything else. The Christmas colored plastics were accompanied with notes reflecting the passage of time and my maturity and how I was old enough to want to just pick out something I really wanted. For old time’s sake, I used one of them to buy an action figure. The lonely little plastic robot sat on my desk looking bored; all of my other toys had long been put into storage--along with my children’s books and art supplies.

I spent most of the rest of the afternoon looking at facebook and reading blogs.

Just Awful

Took a day off the the Sabbath. Also, I was hungover and my usual writing time was interrupted by football. You only think I'm kidding. This is a first draft line that actually sounds okay to me right now. It will probably meet with some revisions.

"Your broken stereo plays the sound of snow falling like your gentle breath and I long to catch snow flakes on my tongue."

The goal for this week's writing is to write something that is both upbeat and not shitty. I might also try to revise the downbeat pieces to make them not shitty.

Sorry, mom

This is my current pretentious self-diagnostic personal statement:

"Callous masculinity as a means of assimilation against a backdrop of hopelessness and institutionalized failure where meaninglessness ultimately supersedes romanticism."

Look both ways before you cross that street

This is a first draft I vomited out about twenty minutes ago. It'll probably get revised.

2/4 Flash Memoir (code for "untitled")

There was this girl in high school we all sort of made fun of. Either she was going for the goth look or it just came to her naturally and she figured she may as well embrace it. I mean, she was still a total poser since she came from a good home and had probably had a fairly easy life. Her parents might have gotten divorced and, yeah, that sucks, but this was 2002; grow a pair. I knew her through drama club--this was back when I thought I had what it took to be theatrical or expressive or artsy or any of that gay shit. She always pissed me off.

I guess she thought I was cool; I was one of two asian kids at my high school (we had as little to do with each other as possible) so maybe she thought we were both outsiders and marginalized. Sure I got called a chink once or twice and this kid I only kind of knew made a joke about me eating a dog (for more on this, see “The Only Fight I Ever Got In In high School”) but, for the most part, I had friends and was fairly content for a high schooler. This girl liked to refer to me as “her favorite asian” which was benign enough to just ignore. I want to make it clear I was never actively mean to her or anything--I don’t think anyone really was. We were all just like, “write your poems about crows and darkness. Whatever.”

So, some time senior year, she was absent for like a week, I guess. I had just developed this huge crush on Aimee Keys so random poser-goths weren’t my concern. Anyway, when she got back, she had these new bracelets which seemed to be there to hide the bandages on her wrists but they were jangly and shiny so all they really did was let us all know she had something under them to hide. The scuttlebutt was that she had tried to kill herself that weekend but fucked it up because she crossed the street instead of going down the road--dumbass.

My mom got a call from someone else’s mom and sat me down to talk about it and, you know, if this was a story or something, maybe I would have realized how I should have been there to be her friend and I’d have made that step to hang out with her so she had someone to talk to about... how she really wanted attention, I guess. But that’s not the case; that girl was fucking annoying.

Last I heard, she had gotten married to an accountant and they had a kid or two.

I still tune in

This occurred to me while I was taking a dump this morning. I thought it was interesting but probably not anything to base any writing on. It's that the key difference between those old timey carnival side shows and the TLC channel is that, in the old timey carnival, the freaks could stare back.

28 Days, No Zombies

The month of February brings productivity in one piece of memoir written every day. March will be for revising. The first week of writing is gonna suuuuuuck.

This is probably what I would look like if I was a white guy

The Grey Space

I sort of wonder if the census is going to call me "oriental" and how long it'll be before that gets taken seriously.

Color Me Robotized

4/21/86-1/23/07; I miss you, sis

X Marks the Spot

There are these maps you can order that use various databases to create a neat, color-coded, block by block map of people's Faith in a given area. There is a free sample pack you can get but, if you want the whole set, that costs you. I'm sure there are some special deals you can get, though, if you are ordering them for a church. I guess they use some census data to reflect socio-economic status and independent survey data to reflect Faith involvement and Faith interest from household to household. This is, of course, all based on the head of the household.

Churches looking to increase their numbers in these rough economic times can utilize these maps so that they can plan programs to effectively engage the communities around them. Let's pray to their God-game that some of them are using this information to better serve the poor not by hosting youth lock-ins and spaghetti feeds but by seriously looking at methods to break the cycle of poverty.

This serious investigation into the staggering disparity between Christian-say and Christian-do could lead to a massive reconfiguration of the Church, transforming this group of people into a progressive, healthy movement in a world that has passed the point of dark to become almost farcical. With the largest religious movement in the richest nation in the world reconfigured to do good, suddenly, the world begins to smile.

It's a pretty picture to think about.

I like Humpty Dumpty better.

No one is going to claim that this blog is anything to speak of. When I began it, it was with an understanding that The Cold Shoulder blog, much like The Cold Shoulder writing, would probably be a late-bloomer and hit-and-miss at best. I really do know that drinking + carousing ≠ good writing (see overrated) but, damn it, I'm going to make absolutely sure.

This is not an apology for the early stages of a new blog so much as a promise of better things to come. Better real things. Lord help me if I begin to rely on a trademark gimmick to trick you into coming back. With any luck, my trademark will be consistently enjoyable writing.

Fuck Hat-guy.