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.