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Living midpoint between the valley
and the peak of a mountain
means you’re still in the shadow of the giant
feeling tall on a troth;
It’s like standing on the plastic rim of a tupperware
disfigured with evaporating heat
waiting for the snow kissed winds to sweep
dropping heat and eyes to sleep
on this somnambulists hot night.

It’s one o’clock in the morning.
Waiting for the curtain’s to animate,
I hear my neighbor across the street.
Tonight, he has a soliloquy,
performed on the paved hot road
with quarreling cats and swindling rats,
Drunk and missing home, he says, drunk and missing home.
He’s a teacher too, but we’ve never met
first impressions should be coherent and content,
so I just listen.

Zucchini is in season, so I have five
Funny how this raw vegetables looks
on the palm of my hand:
reticent and protective,
porous, listless and dry–
Sometimes I think that sadness is a dried heart
if not too skinny with lost affection
too plump walled from affection
Like Zucchini, soak in hot water and right attention,
the core will get thick and heavy,
soft and present,
gliding aromatic wave of playfulness,
sweet and semi crunchy talkative invitation:
“Dance with me, dance with me!”

The wind is back,
The rats scurry off to the sewers,
Heat that revives is different from the heat that hangs
Cold that dries is different from the cold that sooths.

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“So what inspires you?” Silent fidgeting as the audience struggles to fill the empty void at the reading. Typical answers: things no one talks about, my culture, the stories of my grandmother, comic books, etc, etc. Me? I’m inspired by pictures of my throat when it was invaded by mathematically perfect spherical colonies of bacteria.

I was born in a generation that watched the flesh of my country scar and people dive hundreds of stories, screaming, charred skin, seared mouth, and from somewhere hearing: do we have a list? Angered and pained, I supported Congress to war. Seven years, 4,000 soldier bodies, and a thousands of dollars lost on a depreciated economy, I’m regretting that decision. I sat on the pinhole of a gun in slum raids at three o’clock in the afternoon, and in the cockpit watching bombs fall to a mushroom in a part of the world that I thought were only markers of my parent’s generation. After we won the war, we’d leave, right? But war is never that simple and I wonder what was I cheering for on the tv? Say mister, is that an extended cab, 12 cylinder engine SUV?

Or how about the financial uncertainty since the fifth grade that there would no Medicare/Social Security funds for me? Nothing better than a 15 minute surgery that costs me two months paycheck even with insurance. Welcome to the land of the free and watch your step, don’t want to get injured and fall financial uncertainty or foreclosure with medical bills. But those with money aren’t really affected, right?

Do you want me to say the fairness of affirmative action? No, that ended the year I applied to law school. Watching the lawyer across the way living in a one bedroom to pay quarter million school loans to get a job that pays a teacher’s salary just didn’t equate. So this artist/teacher wonders why one job should be more prized than another while society complains on issues of crime, child endangerment, etc.? You get exactly what you pay for returned with the respect that you give it. Were we better off trying to balance a situation of inequality or asking a child to be responsible even if they couldn’t get all those extras tutorials and experiences on the other side of the tracks? Or was that just a band aid for a bigger issue of inequality that no one has dared to touch?

So, is it any wonder if I choose something that can be proven, logical, and needs no translation to inspire me? I am part of Generation Bacterium. I am Googlized, idealized, generalized and egocentrically privileged to hide in the world I want…just look at my avatar. I am part of a generation of extreme information and inverted emotional disposition; just check my blog or Facebook to keep up and don’t forget to show comment love. I am the generation that has watched documentaries of thousands starving in third world countries since 1986 fed by the UN except now, there are no more crops. I wish it would be about survival, but that would be standing on those that live on hands and knees. I watch for haphazard encounters, like worms on vermiculated wood, looking for the few to change the world for the world’s sake and not to benefit their pocket.

As for the I never get political argument, I would, but it would be a two headed dog in a New York avenue looking for some time to kill.

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We lie miles apart
seconds in touch
I think about you
I wonder if we could be making love to Tom Waits
maybe I just listen to Waits too much
silence

Damn, my miserable want
or the Achilles of my lips
so warm with the hot breath of our embrace…
but not really.

in Naha, I’ll sleep in the palace of the shogun
with night and gale floors
and secret anti-assassination whispers
loud knowledge of clear intentions,
honesty of affection

I like my eyes,
dark, quiet, small and sad
porcelain white plate cool surface
to my baby octopi heart
blind temerity,
into blue fires I go
mastery is painful.

“The one who loves the least is master.” –W. H. Auden

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But really, with two pink eyes, bird flu, bronchitis, two busted ankles and endless visits to the doc, thank God April is gone! So how can you celebrate poetry?

1. Poets.org has 30 ways to celebrate the month by: adding a verse to your signature line, hosting a reading, taking your favorite poet out to lunch or giving out a pocket size poems to your friends like this one or this one. My personal favorite is the mp3 ring tones and the phone friendly poetry web page. Think how cool a phone ringing with “Do not go gentle into that good night, Fight!..” would be!

2. Gas is expensive so check out your favorite poet on the net with University of Cali’s TV. I love the way the camera allows you to see the relationship of the author to the audience. The second option: Download a chapter a day from the best books in history or checkout a podcast. A little difficult with the monotone reading and there’s no time to look for really cool words.

3. Find other poetry blogs with blogged poetry. Because I believe poetry is personal, technical and artistic, I surf through many web pages before something hits me. I recommend Ms. Hamm’s beautiful poetry blog and my next interview. Though modern poetry breaks with the author’s natural breath, I still have to wonder where is the line between poetry and prose? Mr. Rappleye, for introducing me to the words of Rothke, “I used to think of poets as helping one another; as advancing consciousness together.” It’s difficult to find a community of poets.

4. Go Shexy! After I’m done with this semester (Research Analysis: 100!), I plan to celebrate poetry month by dressing in my hottest black number and passing out my poetry to Asians on the street. In this harebrained idea is the newest member on my blogroll: Epik Justino, teacher, camera dude and human rights activist.

I was fortunate to see Madam Butterfly as a teenager at the Kennedy Center, Washington, D.C. I will be visiting the inspiration for this play, the second city to get hit with an atomic bomb: Nagasaki, Japan. I am looking forward to seeing the poetry the place inspires within me and taking lots of great pics from the 9-13th.

Stay tuned for these images and as always, write and send me poetry. Orale! Bali, Bali! The sun sets slower on your side of the world.

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Suwadeekaaaa..
the bell clanged against spotless glass door
before the eye reached the salad bar
The girl at the registered sung hello
I had nothing but sandwiches for the week
her really brown skin, wide native cheekbones
Mongolian thick lips that no matter what she wore
she always had gold crown and silk trail–
princess and history keeper of a land I visited.

Energy
Sounds are like songs when spoken
a guiding set chosen by a community
signature accents, drags and intonations
chisels a country’s id

Pride
Say nothing and listen for abnormalities:
the hesitating “yes, but…so, ummmm”
is a stumbling Jesus walking out the door
every culture has a mid-thought meaningless word

Discipline
Listen again, this time to inner reaction
What’s consider beautiful or a gray line taboo?
Are you walking into line or waltzing hello?
When do shoulders catch the sun or hide in orange pashas?

Conservation
After hello, please and thank you,
the first word you learn to say is shaped by geography
the first sound is always ‘ma’
Imagine if water was your first word…

Language,
little mirrors of perfect imperfection
sound bites of who we are
and who we want to be
a sea we perpetually sail,
on turbulent tides and glassy white beaches
we’ll never reach.

One of my favorite photos from the Thailand set. Yes, I did take this photo! Yes, it has been months since my Thailand trip, but I was really missing having an elephant as a mode of transportation and having fresh coconut, papaya, pineapple and mango for breakfast.

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I’m in the Citizen’s Gymnasium behind the baseball stadium quietly looking up from the epicenter. The matted floor hosts about 400 people in the five sections of competitions. There are about 1500 people walking in and out of the front doors, through the narrow hallways of noisy anticipation. I couldn’t sleep that night. The wakeup call was at five, to leave at seven and arrive at eight. To my right, the honorary section holds about 50 founders and professors along with police academy personnel and military. Underneath, the special five foot wreaths adorn the 15 foot-long trophy section. The elements and light are filtered through cloth and banners. I’m in love with the room full of different colors, variations and expressions of both conformity and individuality in a uniform. That corner belongs to the white stripes, this one is the only uniform in red, and of the four gyms that chose white, one etches the students name on the back, the other has red lettering and the rest are black. My mouth is dry but I resist, knowing anticipation can overwhelm any stomach.

I step away from the competitive vibe to observe. How did I get here in front of hundreds of years of tradition and interpretation? How was I so lucky to see high leaps past a barricade of 15 people, kicks 12 feet high softly landing into kneeling position that bow for grace and humility? How was I so blessed, an immigrant from la Alameda where my grandma and I crossed the city’s black water canals to reach the market every day, to witnessing/participating in a tradition and power hundreds of years old living and breathing? How did I get here on the blue tatami floor looking up, breathing in, screaming out, following my dreams at 30, exploring life?

My ears listen desperately for my name, filtering words because I don’t want to let my master down, get lost or attract attention…as if the only foreign, brown female in a bright orange gi could be overlooked. So, I try to remain anonymous: always quiet, while communication comes to me in the most efficient way possible and the past speaks to me. Every country I’ve been to, I have a teacher and a community of friends. Though it was not easy to find a martial arts teacher that would invest their time in me or work outside their language, I have found many. Yes, they all share a love of the arts, for the skill, endurance and peace it brings into their life, but from my perspective they share many more qualities. They share a nobility and faith in the arts and themselves to want to see everyone excel. My sensei in Houston is a cancer survivor, adamant to keeping the dojo in the community and one of his students is blind. They have great poise and goofy smiles that never brag or boast but welcome everyone open hearted. My sensei in Colombia has traveled the world with his art and is the sole traditional jujitsu dojo in a city of 2 million people. But most of all, they share a great sense of justice and accountability to their physical world and community of the martial arts. My kwanjamin in Korea named his gym bright light to let everyone know it was a place of honesty and principles. Nobility, faith, poise, honesty, justice and accountability, are traits that I have earned and refined from years in the arts because of my teachers. They are people who talk to me and help me see my self worth by making me better. People who go past the monetary rewards to give me self-confidence, challenges, and pride in my accomplishments. People who don’t misjudge character going beyond a five foot brown female but an individual that can. I’m aware of them, myself, and who and what I represent every where I go.

The competitions begin. I sit in line asking my breath to relax all the muscles in my body and release any competitive hesitations or fears. I won fourth place. Its a great start to next year’s gold medal.

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