becky nao

becky nao
a poem by Yuri Kageyama

becky nao
kicked me so my shins turned purple
taunted me daily mimicking my voice
becky nao
believed there was only one slot
for an Asian girl in fourth grade class
becky nao
the white girls weren't rivals
only me, the one other Oriental girl,
becky nao
slit eyes and black hair,
good grades, neat handwriting
becky nao
if i fell dead, gone, wiped out,
she could be that survivor yellow girl
becky nao
who's going to tell us apart?
so there can be only one of us
becky nao
flicks her eyelashes at blond boys
flaunting a fetish, even at age 10
becky nao
fat face, fat calves
her fat belief as the solitary token
becky nao
hatred curled tight in a nasty gnarl
all for wishing to be that China doll
becky nao

Poem Breaking Silence

My poem "Disco Chinatown" is in "Breaking Silence," an anthology of Asian American poetry (1983: Greenfield Review Press) featured in the latest edition of this online magazine "asiacana."

Disco Chinatown
a poem by Yuri Kageyama

street blood throbbing
punk maggots of the slums with fake ID's
smelling British sterling
cover the stink of sweat, car grease and dirt
and the blood from being cut up by a Jo
or is it W.C?
slant eye to slant eye talking
smooth talking or trying,
"hey, baby-
looking nice tonight"
spilling sunrises
margaritas
bourbons with cherries
giddy easy striding to make it to my table
in your own eyes, a ghetto knight,
"wanna drink?"
in a flash and a flick, light my cigarette
the dance floor is dead tonight
linoleum cracked
the Filipino D.J. Berkeley Asian American Studies drop out is stoned
and even the lights look neon sleazy
you want me to move, a wax museum dancing doll, under your macho
gaze,
or in your arms, rocking following your rocks,
layered black hair,
moustache, always, to tickle the quick kisses,
cheap shiny shirt, four buttons open,
a jade pendant swaying against yellow brown flesh,
darker brown leather and long long legs,
you want to take me home
and the grip on my shoulder tightens,
you driving a Camaro Z28?
an Olds 442?
a broken down Malibu?
a Caddy Eldorado?
you want to be rich someday
you want to enjoy life, you say,
cuz it's so so short,
ALL girls want you for their old man,
"in bed, I have a good body,
opium makes me last
and last
I'm ten inches
and, "a smile,
"this thick"
you play the mind games with a too ridiculous seriousness
not another escape out just for kicks
your street male pride can't take no scratches
you'll kick my ass when the number I give you isn't mine
you tell me not to dance with anyone else
when I just met you tonight
and isn't your old lady waiting at your apartment?
hardened hard up
Ricksha stray tiger cat
your life view quite
doesn't
touch mine
and being gang banged isn't my type of thrill
disco steps don't silence sirens
and the skyscraper lights don't touch Grant Avenue on a Friday night
Golden Dragon massacred meat can't ever be pieced back together again
black lights and hanging ferns or Remy sweetness can't hide
spilled out alley fish guts
that tell you and tell you
there just ain't no future
your hands grope
your eyes closed
your tongue dry
your penis limp
poor ChinaMAN-child

learning about pride

as a parent, i have always tried to instill in my son pride in one's identity (race, culture, national origin).
but i don't think i was ever truly proud.
somewhere deep inside, there was that feeling of being a second-class citizen because i was not white/Anglo-Saxon/a Westerner/an american.
asserting one's pride is the mirror image of that feeling of inadequacy.
if you were really so proud, you wouldn't need to keep saying it.
the whole idea of having to say it over and over again means you aren't so sure and you aren't so proud.
watching my son grow up to be a taiko drummer has helped me learn what true pride in one's identity is.
because there is more to it than just telling yourself over and over that it's OK not to be white.
it is about seeking meaning in your life, pursuing a way of life, including everyday things like the place where you choose to live, the music you choose to listen to, the artists you emulate as your models.
taiko is all about being Japanese although it is a strong statement that holds appeal to the international audience in the same way that the music of Paganini or Mozart holds appeal to the international audience, including many Asians.
in that sense, i have never really been Japanese because my cultural references are Western _ rock 'n' roll, James Joyce, Biblical Salvation, Claude Monet.
there is nothing really wrong with this because being international is a good thing, and art is about transcending the confines of prejudices and boundaries of consciousness.
but watching my son grow up to pursue a Japanese form of music is helping me come to terms with the incompleteness and imperfections of my pride.
now i know, i was never really proud.
i was always ashamed and felt inadequate, even afraid.
i was never sure of what i was trying to pass on to future generations as pride.
or that was precisely why i was so determined to teach my son that pride.
but when i saw that pride staring back at me in my son and how beautiful and oh so Japanese taiko can be,
i was confronted with pride in its truest and purest that stem so deep from one's soul from someone so close to me that he is a part of me.
and so now that pride is mine.

Transcending age, sex and race

When we get old, very very old, so old we are covered with wrinkles and our skin is pale and our breasts shrivel and droop and an old man looks and smells no different from an old woman, do we finally and once and for all transcend the barriers of sex and race?
By succumbing to the all-unifying power of age and soon-to-come death, do we victoriously overcome the hurt of sex and the murder of race and the divisions we must inherit as legacy of mankind like the taint of original sin?
When we get up in morning and look at what looks back at us in the mirror, will we no longer fear society's taunts for how we look and for the petty but definitive prisons of groupings for which we stand and must represent?
Will we at last have the choice of being nothing and so be someone who will not be defined by sex and race, and it will no longer matter whether you are man or woman, black, white or yellow?

Miwa Yanagi is one of my favorite artists because she addresses those very inner thoughts that have always tormented me. She has young women enact how they see themselves as old ladies and takes their portraits. Elevator girls and Amazonian women are other images she evokes for her powerful message. Yanagi never loses her delicate sensitivity and raw energy. She faces those fears head-on while the rest of us cower in shame and self-destruction.

Connecting

Bursts of myopic but weirdly proud hatred thrive on the Net under the guise of anonymity.
Words are spat out, and, oh, with such venom and total irresponsibility.
Even something as simple and powerless as a poem can touch the nerve of evil to expose an inner darkness.
They will fester in their own ignorance and be destroyed by their poison.
This is one kind of connection, as painful and depressing as it may be.
I have never thought that socializing at parties and dinners produces meaningful connections.
Connection happens when you create something with a musician, dancer, illustrator, someone who is as committed to a form of expression and a way of life as yourself.
I can breathe.
Everything fits.
Everything is going right.
We connect so perfectly with each other in a place where race, gender, age, nationality and other barriers don't matter.
Maybe there is no listener with whom to connect.
But that doesn't matter.

Noticing accents

I'd come home from international school, excited I had made a friend. I was puzzled one of the first questions my mother would ask was: What nationality is she? I had to think hard for an answer. I hadn't thought to ask. But she wouldn't stop probing: What color of hair does she have? Does she speak Japanese? What is her last name?
In hindsight, now that I am an adult, this sounds unbelievable. But I often couldn't remember what color hair she had _ maybe it was brownish? black? The most important thing _ the only thing that mattered, and I was maybe 10 years old, 8? _ was that I had found this person who for some reason liked me and was now my friend. Why didn't adults understand that this was what I wanted to talk about, not what nationality she was, or what color of eyes she had so we could figure out what nationality she was?
This may sound bizarre. But many people who attended international schools at a young age have the same experience. Of course, we knew that people came in different sizes and colors and had different preferences for what they liked to eat or do. But it was a mixed up blur of so many ways to distinguish people _ the tone of their voice, their laugh, their skills in coming up with games _ that big words like the Philippines, Iran, America, China, Zambia, whatever, were just tongue-twister that didn't seem half as interesting as the other, more fun ways to tell kids apart.
This is not as bizarre as it sounds. Scientists have found that Japanese babies learn very quickly not to pay attention to the difference between Rs and Ls. That doesn't matter in the Japanese language. For the same reason languages must be acquired early, a child learns what to pay attention to and what not to notice. The world is such a buzz of information, how we discriminate must be learned.
The innocent world, however transient or artificial, where nationality doesn't matter, felt so comfortable that when I learned it wasn't real _ or encountered cases when I had to finally face up to the fact that it wasn't ever real _ it was painful. It was more painful because I had gotten a taste of that innocent world. If I hadn't, I'd probably have accepted it with a shrug, the same way I wouldn't know the difference between Rs and Ls. I can roll my Rs like a salsa singer.
In Japan, a nation that prides itself on being homogeneous and harmonious, horror stories abound of children of Chinese or Korean ancestry routinely being harassed by Japanese, stalked daily, beaten, taunted. And they aren't even a different race.
Once acquired, the art of discrimination is something people thrive on, "ijime" that engrosses the masses.
I don't know why being discriminated for race or ethnicity or sex hurts so much more than being discriminated for performance or personal choices, even looks, another genetically determined feature. But it does. It makes me feel so vulnerable, as though I have been stripped naked, and I can't fight back. In Sociology, we learn race and sex are what we call "master traits." That means other qualities a person may acquire, such as education or career experience, can never ever ever override what is predetermined about that person by race and sex. It is more important in society that someone is black or yellow or white or that someone is male or female than that person happens to be an astronaut or a gangster. Can you imagine that? To me, that is ridiculously bizarre. I want everyone to learn from that child who rushes back to tell her mother she just found a friend _ never mind what nationality she is.

Assumptions

Assumptions
a poem by Yuri Kageyama

when people bad-mouth us
sneering in French
assumptions are being made of us
a yellow face is non-literati,
good at math, grunts only pidgin
assumptions are being made of us
we are followers, never leaders,
happy to be hired
assumptions are being made of us
sidekick in "Heroes," never the hero
Kato like Tonto
assumptions are being made of us
we do dishes
we do blow-jobs
assumptions are being made of us
trying hard to be liked, blend in,
do better than the best
assumptions are being made of us
digging with a scalpel
make our slant eyes round
assumptions are being made of us
sneaky and un-scru-pu-lous
prove our loyalty by "going for broke"
assumptions are being made of us

More Motherhood Notes

"Oya Baka" means "doting parent" in Japanese. Since it's Mother's Day today, here's another from my column:

Black and Yellow

My 3-year-old son wants to be black. All the people he admires _ from Golden Gate Park roller skaters and football stars to break dancers, jazz musicians and even bus drivers _ often happen to be black.
"When I get older, my face is going to get black," he says proudly.
"What color are you now?" I ask.
"Yellow," he says in a meek, almost apologetic tone.
"Your daddy is Asian," I suggest, though he doesn't appear impressed. "Daddy, you and I are Asian, and we're proud we're Asian." I've ben repeating similar propaganda since his infancy.
He looks up with an idea. "Can I pretend my face is black?"
It doesn't take many years in American society _ 3 years and 3 months to be precise in the case of our Isaku _ to figure out racial myths, which are, in part, based on or are exaggerations of reality.
For the Asian in America, the low cultural energy and absence of positive images make it difficult, if not impossible, for a child to think that we are: cool, creative, sexy, attractive, musical, vivacious, outgoing, etc.
It's more like we are: academic, responsible, straight, proper, quiet, modest, subdued, etc.
From the above two lists, guess which one Isaku would pick to emulate.
To give an illustration, aside form the pidgin in Hawaii, or the Cantonese-English of the recent Hong Kong immigrants, Asian Americans lack their own vernacular.
The "hip" Asians who talk "street" basically talk black English. They don't throw in "ne?" or "honto?"
Using Japanese except for names of food ("sushi" is "in" these days) would only destroy their style. And much of Asian American art _ poetry, music, visual art _ remains imitative _ mostly of black or Latin forms, but also of white forms.
Asian Americans have yet to produce an artist on the calibre of Duke Ellington or a media figure with the impact of Prince.
My son recognizes Miles Davis tunes on the radio, strums his plastic guitar wailing "ROCK 'n' roooooll music, if you wanna dance with me," and beats on his drums, claiming he's Elvin Jones. (And all this despite the unusual fact that we do have Asian American friends who play music.)
I point out Brue Lee posters, whenever they are encountered, which isn't that often these days. But I'm being unreasonable to expect a martial artist-actor, no matter how dramatic and handsome, to be relevant to a 3 year old. Many years lie ahead before he'll be taken to those violent films.
With the intention of alleviating _ but perhaps ultimately intensifying _ my son's identity crisis, I've been taking him to a Congolese dance class for children his age. Being of a contrary nature, anyway, he refused to participate. Then I made the worst parental mistake. I praised another student, a little girl, who was performing fantastically, and he muttered with a horrible hatred in his voice, "She's black."
"Don't say anything like that," I hissed, controlling an urge to strangle him while praying that no one else had overheard. "It doesn't matter what you are _ black or Asian. We're all friends."
We had never taught him to be conscious of race that so-and-so was this race while someone else was something else.
But after the class, I had to lecture to my son, "J.J. is black, and Seiji is black, and they're your friends. Wain is black and Dorothy is black ..." I felt like an idiot. But that was the only way he'd have understood.
"But I like black, mama," he protested, tears brimming in his eyes.
I wished that we didn't have to live in world that divided people by the color of skin. I wished that skin color didn't matter to Isaku, someone so young and innocent, but it did, and I was powerless to change it.

Agism

Women like me probably feel they've all gone through their lives suffering some kind of discrimination for being female and for being non-white.
And now, I am starting to realize _ and maybe I am lucky for not having to see this earlier _ that I am going to encounter another reason for discrimination: Age!
I was naive: I thought that with age, women will be seen less sexually desirable as females, and that would help even out the score and lead to more equality.
No such thing.
Japan is a culture that worships youth, which is strange (or maybe not so strange) given that this is one of the most rapidly aging societies on earth.
In the US, youngsters get pushed around because they have no power, money or status.
And that's why we grew up saying: Don't trust anyone over 30.
Agism, it turns out, is just as ridiculous as discrimination on the basis of sex and race.
Age really has nothing to do with anything. But there seems to be a fear about the inability to keep up with the latest.
Appearance is another obvious factor.
Yuri Kageyama gains another battlefront!
Kimiko Date is making a comeback in tennis at 38.
Her husband, a racing driver, told her she may have always won up to now, but what she must learn now is that she must lose, sometimes to those who are younger than she is.
This struck me as very wise words.
That may sound like a contradiction, after all I said about agism, but it's not, really: We must learn to accept defeat, including defeat to those who are younger than us, because, after all, we're getting older, and statistically there are going to be more people who are younger than you, if you live longer.
(We never accept discrimination _ which is totally, totally different from defeat judged by performance, which is irrelevant to age per se.)
No one wins all the time _ age and experience are no guarantee for your win.
You win some and lose some.
And it's just as important to accept rightful defeat as it is to keep going at it to win.

More poetry and percussion on the Noh Stage

Little YELLOW Slut
Poetry by Yuri Kageyama
Kpanlogo percussion by Winchester Nii Tete

You know her:
That Little YELLOW Slut, proudly gleefully
YELLOW-ly hanging on Big Master's arm,
War bride, geisha,
GI's home away from home,
Whore for last samurai,
Hula dancer with seaweed hair,
Yoko Ohno,
Akihabara cafe maid,
Hi-Hi Puffy Ami/Yumi,
Kawaiiii like keitai,
Back-up dancer for Gwen Stefani,
Your real-life Second Life avatar
Eager to deliver your freakiest fetish fantasies,
Disco queen, skirt up the crotch,
Fish-net stockings, bow-legged, anorexic, raisin nipples, tip-toeing Roppongi on
Stiletto heels.

Yessu, i spikku ingrishhu, i raikku gaijeeen, they kiss you,
hold your hand, open doors for me,
open legs for you, giggling pidgin, covering mouth,
so happy to be
Little YELLOW Slut.

Everybody's seen her:
That Little YELLOW Slut, waiting at
Home, cooking rice, the Japanese
Condoleezza Rice,
Smelling of sushi,
Breath and vagina,
Fish and vinegar,
Fermented rice,
Honored to be
Cleaning lady,
Flight attendant for Singapore Airlines,
Charlie Chan's Angel,
Nurse maid, gardener, Japan-expert's wife,
Mochi manga face,
Yodeling minyo, growling enka,
Sex toy, slant-eyes closed, licking, tasting, swallowing STD semen,
Every drop.

Yessu, i wanna baby who looohkuh gaijeen, double-fold eye, translucent skin, international school PTA,
maybe grow up to be fashion model, even joshi-ana,
not-not-not happy to be
Little YELLOW Slut.

I recognize her:
That Little YELLOW Slut, rejecting
Japanese, rejected by Japanese,
Ashamed,
Empty inside,
They all look alike,
Faceless, hoping to forget, escape
To America,
Slant-eyed clitoris,
Adopted orphan,
Dream come true for pedophiles,
Serving sake, pouring tea, spilling honey,
Naturalized citizen,
Buying Gucci,
Docile doll,
Rag-doll, Miss Universe, manic harakiri depressive, rape victim, she is
You, she is me.

Hai, hai, eigo wakarimasen, worship Big Master for mind, matter, muscle, money, body size correlates to penis size,
waiting to be sexually harassed, so sorry, so many,
so sad to be
Little YELLOW Slut.

Story of Miu 11

Continued from previous entries:
Story of Miu 10
Story of Miu 9
Links to Story of Miu 8 and previous entries to where it all started.

___________

The details, when put together, make for a rather fascinating profile of a young man.
Maybe because I am a writer I am by nature intrigued by descriptions of things that people do that offer insight into human nature that writers see as a mission to explore.
I still don't really know Yuga at all.
I only know what Miu told me.
Maybe she is telling only her side of what happened as people are apt to do.
And maybe she didn't even really know him either.
The bits and pieces came slowly and gradually.
But as our conversation went on, the crimes, the shortcomings, the mistakes of Yuga came from her in torrents.
Yuga had another identity, Miu says.
He went to clubs to pick up women.
For this, he went by a false name, Ryuga, which still sounded enough like Yuga so that if someone called out the name _ someone who really knew who he was, who happened to be at the same club, the same party, or the same sidewalk, "Hey, Yuga!" _ the girl he was trying to seduce wouldn't find out he had told her his false name, the lie, the other identity: The boy who wasn't a poor musician at all but an up-and-coming recruit at a PR firm, who had money and on his path to fame.
"That is so sad," Miu said to me, scoffing and sneering, although she was almost going to cry.
"I thought I came to Japan to find human relationships that were devoid of the separation of racism, to link with people in a way that wasn't tainted by the barriers of racial stereotypes. I just wanted a man who would look at me and not see a Jap before he saw anything else."
I touched her shoulder, pale and frail and trembling.
But nothing I could do or say was going to make Miu feel better.
When Yuga was Ryuga, when he wasn't practicing with Miu and the rest of his band, when he wasn't poring over his studies, he was talking to strange women as Ryuga in darkly deafening club after club, whispering strange nothings into their ears.

an ode to the Caucasian male

Poetry by Yuri Kageyama.
Guitar and music arrangement by Carl Freire.
Recorded in Green Village Studios, Tokyo, April 13, 2008.
"an Ode to the Caucasian male," from Yuri Kageyama, "Peeling," Berkeley, Calif: I. Reed Press, 1988.
First published in "Women Talking, Women Listening."

an ode to the Caucasian male

white man
white man
with the silky blond hair
the emerald-blue eyes
and the cool million dollar grin
I won't mind being a Suzy Wong for you.
cuz
I'm tired of the laundry-men
and the dirty restaurant cooks
who can only smell of won ton soup
and talk about chowmein
they don't have the powers,
the style you do
seems you've got to be white
to really be a man
the long sleek legs
with the acid rock walk
in the hot tight pants
where the warm prick dwells
it's okay
you see only the race in me
just a stereotype, not my personality
it's okay
cuz, white man
you have
whiteness
to give.

Nissan as Japan turning global?

Getting to watch high-profile people up close is one perk of our job as reporters.
This week, I did an interview with Carlos Ghosn, the chief executive of Nissan and Renault.
I can only observe Nissan as an outsider.
But Nissan has changed over the last decade in one key, obvious and simple way: The makeup of the people who work there is more diverse.
It's unclear whether that's going to just slow down decision-making, or prove a gem of an asset for an automaker trying to expand in emerging markets in a world and industry that are increasingly global.
It's a nice thought to think diversity produces winners.
But does it?
Toyota and Honda don't have diverse management.
But they're beating Nissan (profit, vehicle sales).
Obviously, a company's success is so complex there are many factors that ultimately determine what happens.
And the significance of promoting diversity is likely lost on both sides of the Pacific _ in the U.S., because diversity is so commonplace, and, in Japan, because diversity is so rare.
For some reason, it's charming to watch people from different nations talk English in heavy accents to make decisions at a big company.
Maybe it's a reminder of how corporations, even big ones, are in the end about the individual people who work there.

Little Yellow Slut (with music)

Yuri Kageyama (poetry)
Teruyuki Kawabata (bongo, djembe, percussion)
Haruna Shimizu (kpanlogo drums, percussion)
Keiji Kubo (didgeridoo)

Recorded in Tokyo Feb. 16, 2008

A performance of poetry and music by the Tokyo Flower Children.

Little YELLOW Slut

You know her:
That Little YELLOW Slut, proudly gleefully
YELLOW-ly hanging on Big Master's arm,
War bride, geisha,
GI's home away from home,
Whore for last samurai,
Hula dancer with seaweed hair,
Yoko Ohno,
Akihabara cafe maid,
Hi-Hi Puffy Ami/Yumi,
Kawaiiii like keitai,
Back-up dancer for Gwen Stefani,
Your real-life Second Life avatar
Eager to deliver your freakiest fetish fantasies,
Disco queen, skirt up the crotch,
Fish-net stockings, bow-legged, anorexic, raisin nipples, tip-
Toeing Roppongi on
Stiletto heels.

Yessu, i spikku ingrishhu, i raikku gaijeeen, they kiss you,
hold your hand, open doors for me,
open legs for you, giggling pidgin, covering mouth,
so happy to be
Little YELLOW Slut.

Everybody's seen her:
That Little YELLOW Slut, waiting at
Home, cooking rice, the Japanese
Condoleezza Rice,
Smelling of sushi,
Breath and vagina,
Fish and vinegar,
Fermented rice,
Honored to be
Cleaning lady,
Flight attendant for Singapore Airlines,
Nurse maid, gardener,
Japan-expert's wife,
Mochi manga face,
Yodeling minyo,
Growling enka,
Sex toy, slant-eyes closed, licking, tasting, swallowing STD semen,
Every drop.

Yessu, i wanna baby who looohkuh gaijeen, double-fold eye, translucent skin, international school PTA,
maybe grow up to be fashion model, even joshi-ana,
not-not-not happy to be
Little YELLOW Slut.

I recognize her:
That Little YELLOW Slut, rejecting
Japanese, rejected by Japanese,
Ashamed,
Empty inside,
They all look alike,
Faceless, hoping to forget, escape
To America,
Slant-eyed clitoris,
Adopted orphan,
Dream come true for pedophiles,
Serving sake, pouring tea, spilling honey,
Naturalized citizen,
Buying Gucci,
Docile doll,
Rag-doll, Miss Universe, manic harakiri depressive, rape victim, she is
You, she is me.

Hai, hai, eigo wakarimasen, worship Big Master for mind, matter, muscle, money, body size correlates to penis size,
waiting to be sexually harassed, so sorry, so many,
so sad to be
Little YELLOW Slut.

Being Big in Japan

Some famous Americans are embarrassed to Be Big in Japan.
Read lack of taste, intelligence and technical finesse taken for granted with Being Big Elsewhere like Europe and the US of A.
Asians wear mousey dark suits, part their oily hair at the side, have buck teeth and dark glasses and sing karaoke and fight each other at bargains for designer items and stand in long lines for Broadway musicals, Sting concerts and Krispy Kreme doughnuts.
So Being Big in Japan is really Nowhere at all, except for the money obviously.
But Being Big Somewhere gets complex if you aren't part of the mainstream and must place yourself in such a way to get to the funding/reputation/Crumbs of the Pie that make those outside the mainstream acceptable to the mainstream under its standards.
Not caring about Being Big Anywhere is to be free of all that nonsense.
And then Japan _ like the California desert or what Europe was for Dexter Gordon or the bottom of the sea where dolphins play _ can offer relief.
I'm earning an honest living fortunately in a way that has something to do with writing and the public good.
And I do the right thing in my responsibilities to my family, my conscience and society.
When I have free time, I write poems.
I'm spending what time I have on Earth in a way that makes sense to me.
Wanting to Be Big is Very Small.

People Who Know Pain

The World is divided bet-
Ween two kinds of People
The Winners and the Losers
The Takers and the Givers
The Famous and the Forgotten
The Loved and the Unloved _
Those who don't care and

People who know Pain
People who know Pain

when your tongue rolls, the
tips of my nipples, piercing
knife of betrayal

Vincent Van Gogh
John Coltrane
Garcia Marquez
Toulouse Lautrec
Billie Holliday
Richard Wright
Kenji Miyazawa

People who know Pain
People who know Pain

baby foxes dance,
leaving paw marks in the snow,
fairy tale of joy

Hermit, victim,
Outcast, untouched,
Untouchable
They travel faceless
Shadows on the subway
Mute, unconnected,
Unknowing of their own Pain

People who know Pain
People who know Pain

bitter memories grow
a cancer pomegranate
bleeding and rotting

I'd rather shelter that Pain alone
A powerless nobody,
Ashamed, shunned,
Stench of insignificance,
Laughing the idiot's laugh,
Running forgotten errands,
Dying before living like other

People who know Pain
People who know Pain

a zillion light years
the planet pulsates timeless
soundless universe

I'd never be that superior someone who
Conquers, fornicates, lynches,
Deposits paychecks, plans careers, gives advice,
Forms opinions, writes reviews,
Weighs pros and cons, wins awards,
Attends receptions, discriminates,
Never knowing, shrugging off, how painful

People's Pain can be
People's Pain can be

The Last Poets

Fathers of hiphop, the Last Poets are the archetype of great poetry with percussion.
Like the words of a shaman, poetry can be volatile and painful.
But poetry is about the hope for a better world where the divisions of race don't matter.
The message of "Little YELLOW Slut" is that the same roots of discrimination that create Fetishism are at the bottom of what causes war and hatred and violence.
Stay tuned for Poetic Justice in a Tokyo Sound.
I would like to preface the poem with a quote from Mahatma Ghandi.
Any suggestions?
"You must be the change you want to see in the world."
He reportedly also said: "I believe in equality for everyone, except reporters and photographers."

Puny Yeller Gal

You know her: That Puny Yeller Gal, proudly gleefully yellerly hanging on that Big Master's arm, war bride, geisha, GI's home away from home, whore for last samurai, Yoko Ohno, Hi-Hi Puffy Ami/Yumi, disco queen, skirt up the crotch, fish-net stockings, bow-legged, anorexic, raisin nipples, tip-toeing Roppongi on stiletto heels.
Yessu, i spikku ingrishhu, i raikku gaijeeen, they kiss you and hold your hand, giggling pidgin, so happy to be Puny Yeller Gal.
Everybody's seen her: That Puny Yeller Gal, waiting at home, cooking rice, the Japanese Condoleezza Rice, honored to be cleaning lady, nurse maid, gardener, Japan-expert's wife, sex toy, open legs, open mind, open mouth, licking, tasting, swallowing, STD semen, every drop.
Yessu, i wanna baby who looohkuh gaijeen, double-fold eye, translucent skin, international school PTA, maybe grow up to be fashion model, even joshi-ana, not-not-not happy to be Puny Yeller Gal.
I recognize her: Puny Yeller Gal, rejecting Japanese, rejected by Japanese, ashamed, empty inside, they all look alike, hoping to forget, escape to America, adopted orphan, naturalized citizen, docile doll, rag-doll, Miss Universe, manga, anime, rape victim, faceless, she is you, she is me.
Hai, hai, eigo wakarimasen, worship the Master Western male for mind, matter, muscle, money, so sorry so sad so many Puny Yeller Gal.
(a poem in progress - updated once)

Race and crime _ and reporting on race and crime

When an American racial minority commits a crime, race is an important fact, if not the most significant fact.
When a member of the racial majority commits a crime, race is incidental.
This is something that has to be said, although many people don't like to say it for fears of being perceived as defending the crime or worse yet the criminal.
This is not about putting the blame on racism to defend the crime/criminal.
Obviously there are far more people who have been victims of racism all their lives and DON'T kill.
It is to the credit of all members of racial minorities who have gotten beyond racism and managed not to end up criminals.
But is this being understood?
Not if every time, race becomes the big focus of a crime, and that's being taken for granted as a matter of fact.
And isn't that, after all, the mentality that perpetuates that kind of crime in the first place?
Why isn't that being addressed today?

More than 40 years ago, it has all been said in Alex Haley's interview with Miles Davis.

Statement from the Asian American Journalists Association

Asking the media to avoid mentioning race in a story may be unrealistic.
Asking the media to mention race in the proper way (with the proper perspective) may be just as unrealistic.
But it's not asking too much to ask the media to avoid the assumption that race is somehow an important aspect of the suspect that led to the crime.
The media should also avoid using wording that plays upon such public assumptions.
Some of the language on broadcast news is appalling.
The sad thing is that the people who are speaking don't even get it.
If we all tried to be more sensitive, then this wouldn't even be an issue.
Such standards for sensitivity should be higher for journalists than for the general public.