Category Archives: poetry

Dear girl child in a world of men,

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**I usually keep it light and easy in here but this has been on my heart…

A poem:

This is a moment for you,

Never mind what he has to say…to explain it away.

Let me say to you that it’s not OK.

Your innocence–even “fast tailed” girls who scribbled their love in notebook margins–to have it swept away?

Glittering un-guarded prey?

It’s not OK.

Too many secrets to keep,

Too many touches and whispers to sweep,

Under the family rug,

Well that got damned rug is lumpy!

And yeah I’m feeling jumpy and might just jump cuz,

It’s not OK.

Too many roses with too many thorns cuz somebody thought

It’s OK…one word, un heard, it’ll be OK…

One kiss, who’d miss the light in her eyes when I steal it away? When I drain it away?

Girl child know that it was never OK,

It was never OK.

It was never OK.

And you shall inherit the earth someday.

Trending now: All things Asian

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Day/title 61

Titular explanation for those who care—but we established that we’re all nerds here so we all care right!?  Right. Ok, so I finally returned I Heart Huckabees to Netflix and was anxious to see what my next DVD would be (I don’t keep up with the cue. I live on the edge son! #freewheeling)

Pay close attention.  This Asian phenomenon has hairpin turns and is a bit convoluted:

Asian instance  #1: My movie for Friday night’s veg fest that arrived in the mail? Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon (you know you’re ready to watch it again too)

Asian instance #2: Today’s name lottery result–Sasaki

Asian instance #3: Came into my shared work space and was greeted by the undeniable aroma of Georgia’s Best Bento BBQ–an office favorite being enjoyed by my office mate…who fought in Vietnam!

Still with me? Relax your pituitary for a sec and meet me back at Bibliographic Info:

Bibliographic Info:

The loom and other stories
Sasaki, Ruth A.

Graywolf Press, 1991

Shhhh. i'm looming.

Summary (Kirkus Review):

An accomplished first collection by a third-generation San Franciscan. The stories here, most set in California, reflect Sasaki’s Japanese-American background in a low-key but poignant way–not so much as a clash of contrasts but as a rivalry of claims: the customs, the foods, even the idioms of the past that still tug, even at a generation who have been spared the earlier prejudices and wartime hostilities. Though the pieces are separate, most are about the Terasaki family. In “Ohaka-Mairi,” the family goes to the cemetery to pay respect to the dead, and t he narrator recalls her father’s bitterness at the death of her elder sister in a climbing accident.

My reaction:

Yukio Mishima she is not.  And who knew Yukio was so hot (just Google imaged him)?  And who knew he committed sepuku? Love his writing but didn’t give his life the diligence due.

A little haiku to light up the dark

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Shhhhh!!! I feel like maybe we’re supposed to be covert and quiet like up in here.  You may have noticed that many of my fellow WordPressians blog pages have gone dark in protest against SOPA.  And rightly so,  SOPA deserves to be protested.  It probably had good intentions but it has the ability to go horribly wrong.  Bloggers are impacted because we write, and when we write we may link. What if we link to a blacklisted site. Could that spell trouble for us?  What if our beloved WordPress itself is blacklisted?  I’m really not familiar with all of the fine print but it just feels like SOPA is doing too much.

All that said I didn’t have the heart to totally go dark for a few days.  Although I’m all about solidarity (see the black ribbon I’m sportin? Upper righthand corner?) I just couldn’t shut up for a a whole week! I hafta keep chugging along or I’ll come to a complete stop and go cold.  Can’t do that. Just getting warmed up!

So with out further ado…

Day 10!

Bibliographic Info:

The Classic Tradition of Haiku : An anthology

Bowers, Faubion

Mineola, NY : Dover Publications, 1996

ommmmmmmmmm........

Summary (library website):

Unique collection spans over 400 years (1488–1902) of haiku history by the greatest masters: Basho, Issa, Shiki and many more, in translations by top-flight scholars in the field. Editor Faubion Bowers provides Foreword and many informative notes to the poems.
My reaction:
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Confession.  I couldn’t hunt this book and physically hold it in my loving hands because our branch didn’t have a copy.  So  I headed over to books.google.com (great resource!) where I was able to find a digitized version of the book.  Sure its not the entire text but there was enough there to inspire me.
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An excerpt from the book (that I had to manually transcribe because of course, copy/paste is not allowed.  See how hard I work for yall?! :D):
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“Haiku lovers look for specific words and images to help reveal the deeper layers of meaning that expand the layers of each poem.  These fall into three categories : What, Where and  When. (pg. ix )”  Hey! Didja know that haiku are songs “meant to be  uttered in one breath(pg. ix)”?  Cool huh?
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A haiku from a poet by the name of Iio Sogi (1421-1502):
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everything that was
has vanished from my aged heart
leaving not a trace
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My humble attempt*:
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to remember You
is respite from injury
harbor from myself
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*I’m kicking myself for offering any type of explanation as art should require none but in my haiku You=The Creator/GOD and myself=ego