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.
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?”
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.
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.”
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.
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.
"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.
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.
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.
...she’s such a cut-up
when she’s cut up
and when she coughs up,
sometimes it sounds pretty as
the songs that she suppressed, forgot
then improvised the chorus
but batted a lash and waved that ass
so no one seemed to notice.
At some point, maybe I'll post the earliest draft of that poem Jordan Porter called Twilight. He wasn't entirely off-base.
The most recent draft of what will likely be the first entry in the upcoming Snugglekitty & Other Bedtime Stories.
Snugglekitty and Friends
Walking by the lake,
everything was grey.
“Hold my hand, I’m cold.”
I rubbed her wrist for warmth.
Only two decades made her
so frail.
I told myself it was fine,
told her she was beautiful.
Convenience or cowardice
(probably cowardice)
kept us from ever communicating beyond
bedsheets, whispered
Nothings between drops of sweat and listless sighs.
I told myself it was fine,
told her it was comfort.
Nothings strained to something when
Her body whispered
it was not hers alone.
She threw away her cigarettes.
I told myself it was God’s will,
told her everything was fine.
Walking by the lake,
two again.
(barren heart with barren womb)
“Hold my hand, I’m cold.”
I held my breath, felt the void,
told myself things were not fine,
told her it was God’s way.
Slashed herself up with sadness.
Paling wrists in darkened water
somehow restored hope.
“Hold my wrist, I’m cold.”
I held her hand,
told her everything was fine.
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