It's not that all I'm writing about is people dying so much as those are always the weakest drafts workshopped into the most readable pieces.

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. 

On Not Writing Enough Lately

I drink too much. 

I’m losing weight, I don’t look well. 

A fleeting quip about going from jaundiced to Jon dust makes me smile in the mirror and

I am alone with my recycling--with the bottles that stack up on shelves like books

Each with 750-1000ml of whispered prayers, swallowed regret, every murmur in between

I hope will reach across an ocean, translate into a language I don’t speak.

There’s no wind today. 

If I exhale hard enough, I can send these gallons of messages across the waves

to a familiar foreign shore where the ghost of a childless woman wanders, waiting.

If I drink enough,

waste away enough,

I can fold her shadow into mine and

tell her I'm sorry for not writing sooner.

Overstuffed Egos

Chipotle is run by motherfuckers. I was thinking about that today as I watched my all white office scarf down over-stuffed burritos as we dealt with financial aid at a for-profit school. This poem was going to be about that. It was also going to be way longer and better. It was a long day.

On a side-note, Chipotle "lost" one of our orders. It was giggle-worthy.

4/4/11 No Title Yet

She aced the English class on symbolism,

even though she thought it was a joke--

the concept, not the class so much.

By default the expert on any hyphenated-studies,

head of the class talking head with her mind

on defaulting--she got a part time job,

sacrificing, longing so, suffice it to say,

she was everyone’s Cinderella story fantasy--

mostly for worse.

Dad worked himself to death,

mom as the real racial other, unknown

with influence in two ways on veins;

Dad’s veins swelled from work,

pride swelled for his daughter.

He asked her what she learned at school,

in half truths she told him lots.

She never did a keg stand;

she didn’t have time for that shit.

Words in a Quiver--maybe that was too esoteric

NaPoWriMo update: I am Robin-Hooding internet in my apartment so my poem posts might come as weekly installments from a coffeehouse somewhere. Weekly installments of mediocrity. Be excited.

Backdated 4/3

4/3/11 It Gets Better Bitter

Some time in the near future,

A little Korean-American boy with his Scandinavian-American mom

(either Swedish or Norwegian, depending on the year)

will look in the mirror, both in their new red turtlenecks and say

“We look just the same!”

Later, he might ask her what she said

when other kids on the playground

called her mean names like

chink or slant

she’ll smile sadly, and answer as best she can.

Some time between puberty and

becoming a man,

he’s going to sit in his basement

working up the courage to slice into his

wrists with his dad’s scalpel--

endure the pain like a Samurai

(he doesn’t know what the Korean equivalent is),

let the lowest common denominator color

drain out sorrow he can’t understand.

He’ll never work up the courage.

Some time in college, he’ll tell a pretty German-Irish-French-American girl

“I’m basically white, when it comes down to it”

in a misguided attempt to get in her pants.

This will fail both immediately and

more profoundly, years later, when an Asian-American Studies class

shows him history is more than dates and dead white people.

New friends who look like him will

help him develop a pride of being, hope for a future.

He’ll make friends, influence people,

grasp a new American Dream of achievement,

walk tall until an ignorant old woman asks

loudly and slowly:

“DO YOU SPEAK ENGLISH?”

Backdated 4/2

Fuck You and You Stupid Bangs

There was that day we all died

(no cult bullshit, mind you)

when the make-shift wooden sidewalk

above

the

abyss

above, the pipe construction

that carries our waste into the

Mighty Mississippi

We fell, together,

finally united

a congress with air and impending doom

toward those pipes

carrying our shit and our toilet paper and

our pets we got tired of,

the remnants of the wood walkway falling with us

Above us, pigeons circled,

in our last seconds, we thought they were

startled by our noise but they had seen this coming--

they had sensed it for weeks.

Above us, they circled cooing a

melodic “fuck you” since this was

their sidewalk first.

NaPoWriMo 2011

I'm doing the NaPoWriMo Challenge again. It looks like linebreaks are going to come and go on this site. Maybe this is blogspots way of keeping me from posting poetry at work. I'm kicking it off with a poem about snuggles:

She likes it best when he

holds her tight, sleeping,

holds her to him like

she’s a handle in a storm, a

tree rooted in soil and history.

She likes it best when he

breathes her in, inhales

her scent and murmurs

prayers spoken in tongues of slumber,

holds her close again.

Rain plays rhythmic on the window

pane only sometimes,

she wonders what he dreams about.

He hides it best when he

sleeps, mind at rest, words

form and he smiles, thinking:

“I’ll squeeze the life from you.

I’ll squeeze the life from you and eat it.”

And then Jon lost all his blog-followers

TO: Politacally-Minded White People/Well-Intentioned White Liberals/Most Christians
FROM: Jon/The Cold Shoulder/Guy who's been called Chinese, Dog-eater, Slant, etc.

I actively associate your actions and identity with Sarah Palin. How does that taste?

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.