Abortion _ a poem by Yuri Kageyama

Abortion
_ a poem by Yuri Kageyama

circling earth spinning mind
I dread the scalpel and the guilt
the blood does not come

words careless words carefree
letters like scalpels that bleed
I am made of words

so without love
the fetus wrenched from within
so I turn to words

a story stillborn
abortion resurrected
yet I am made of words

taste the characters
sumi stroke patterns cover
my pale naked skin

come home my baby
womb wounds of words gaping wide
uterus darkness

^ --- <

This is a poem that developed out of an exchange with a writer on Twitter. The lines are all from my part of the exchange, but we set up a rule so that each had to follow an idea from the other, especially the last line, as an inspiration springboard for the next three lines of haiku. We wrote three lines each day. And we took turns. I never told this other person I was writing about abortion. I have subsequently changed the "we" in some lines to "I." I guess I wanted the statements to be softer in the Twitter exchange by making them come from "we." But I really meant "I." I am grateful to the tweeter who helped me write this poem, a segment at a time, a day at a time, and to Twitter for giving us as a tool for personal poetic expression. It has a different feel from a poem written in a single sitting.

love over time

love over time
a poem by Yuri Kageyama

if you have to ask
it is not love
you would be there
right now
making that love
over time
even
if it is not
love now
if you can think
it is not love
life without your
lover
giving that love
over time
grows
into love
forever


hey _ this poem is fit for a greeting card !
so perfectly timed: happy holidays.
not that i understand love at all.
but i do believe that if you can sit back and analyze if this or that relationship should or should not be pursued, well, that's not love.
love means there is no other way of thinking.
love means no choices.
you have to be with this person and there is no other way about it.
you want to give, no conditions attached, despite all the betrayals, disappointments, hardships and maybe even the realization the love was just an illusion and not real at all.
over all that time, what you did, what you chose to stand behind _
and that you _ are real.
that's not an illusion, right?
you are that person.
and all those years _ that history _ over which you lived life believing in that love, no one can take that away from you.
you earned it.
that's love.

Mamako Yoneyama makes dishes fly for women

Long before working mothers became so accepted they're TV-drama heroines, there was a gathering of feminists in Tokyo, where pantomimist Mamako Yoneyama performed a piece on womanhood that ended with her hurling paper plates into the air,
luminous white circles flying like spaceships, one by one, from her hand toward us, gifts of strength and hope.
They were just pieces of paper after they fell to earth.
But Yoneyama, with her voice, movement, character and presence, made them undoubtedly artistic statements.
Maybe things have changed for the younger generation.
But back then, when I was juggling job and motherhood, I was treated as an anomaly to be despised, maybe someone who was abusing her child with neglect.
Kids would come up to my son and ask with a straight face: Do you have a mother?
So unused were they to the idea that a mom could possibly be working and couldn't be there to pick them up, volunteer with the PTA, gossip in school hallways, schmooze with teachers.
The image was unforgettable _ a woman tackling a humble stack of dishes _ transforming them with the beauty of movement, a whip of her delicate wrist, into a galaxy of light defying gravity.
After it was over, we gasped in a moment of joyous silence.
I want to read a poem and throw paper plates into the air _ line by line, in homage of Yoneyama.

From Yuri To Yuri

From Yuri To Yuri _ Japanese Womanhood Across Borders Of Time
A Contemporary Renku Poem (a work in progress)
By Yuri Matsueda and Yuri Kageyama.

(15)
take this knife
lay it down on a round table of
rotting wood
a child trapped in a body with
big pale breasts
a lipstick mouth
listen to the end
coming
in silence
a frog with a tadpole tail
a tadpole with frog legs
too much
hope isn't good
you know what
to do
when things never change

neoteny
neoteny

^___<

(16)
hot roses vapored
became instant ash
left their reflection on his bones
highlighted in green
he is
as they say clean
pristine

^___<

(17)
to yuri from yuri
my solitary audience in blindness
i speak to you
our world sighs breathing in poem
a wilting whimper
a stabbing flash of sunflower
don't cry, don't die, don't lie
no one listens in deafness
but you speak to me
you are my solitary audience

preceding sections:
(14)

(13)

(7-12)

(1-6) _ where it all started, and which goes to show sometimes all you need is one person to connect with in a special way to create poetry.
Yuri and I are both women bilingual/bicultural poets/writers with what we feel is a special sensitivity.
It goes without saying we realize we are creating for a niche market. Just kidding.
It makes sense to us and that's what counts.

More Haiku

So I have more:


春の朝
ピンクが爆発
シフォン舞う

spring morning
pink explodes
chiffon whirls


^___<


なき孫が
小皺に霞む
化粧水

dead grandchild
a blurring thought lost in wrinkles
skin lotion's smell