NaPoWriMo 4/21 Birthday Haibun (first draft)

Under a flag at half mast again, I made a birthday wish that there would be no mass shootings, no bombings, or other acts of public violence today, for just one day. A selfish wish on a day when all I’d like to worry about is the rain. 

It’s warmer today

with the extra breath on Earth,

absence of gunfire. 

The Adoptee Statistic

The rate of suicide among Korean Adoptees is something like 5 times above the national average for comparable age demographics. Here is one guess why:

The Adoptee Statistic (4/5/13, revised 4/11/13)

At night, when the stars come out, I like to pretend each one is an ancestor.

I don’t know if that has any relevance in my History, my heritage;

it has lots of significance in My history. 

They look down at me, speak in a language I can’t understand,

that I’m too lazy to understand;

below the stars already, I sink deeper.

I call my mom--as a troubled child always should

and complain about my job because I lack the vocabulary to say what really bothers me.

My real sadness doesn’t translate,

but manifests as anger, as hate

and she tells me to stop bitching. 

And she’s right

but our blood doesn’t speak the same language

and we’re talking in codes that can’t be broken

so I hang up,

wish I had a mother who needed no translation,

yearn for darkness to reveal more ancestors in the sky

so I can learn by immersion. 

4/2 No Title Yet

4/2

Background shading in a big picture, priorities rearrange, 

accommodate a mission statement that makes my hues swell, 

crowd the other shades until I stand out, disrupt harmony, 

drip off the canvas in horrible, gloopy drops that stain, 

burn through the bamboo floors of your expensive North Loop studio,

drip onto the easel in the studio beneath yours, 

turn a tree in Spring into a charred portrait of 

whatever you think Hell looks like,

the re-purposed bricks catch fire around us, 

spreading to every wine bar and bistro and chic salon

until you’re left charred, lidless eyes rolling upward

to watch the smoke form shapes above you, 

still murmuring your fucking mission statement. 

Flex Time

Once again, NaPoWriMo is upon us and, once again, I will sporadically post four first drafts before flaking on the whole thing. 

I had to wake up earlier than usual today and have lost most of my coherence. I call this "Flex Time." 

Lays coiled around a pillar of the community, heart swollen,

Lies dripping off silver tongue sincerity,

sweet somethings whispered and forgotten. 

Lays across your neighbor’s lawn, winking like “come hither”

Lies about you working late, encourages frustration

like neighbors banging through the ceiling

like little specks that float between 

eyelids and waking moments.

Lie with me.