Remembrances of Our Place

Like the god lying down in the mountain
hand rising at the watery horizon
and the baritone gaining control
of several operatic languages
I want to drive, no longer driven
as a lost boy not to stray, under cover, borrowed cover
calling like sin to throttle my hippocampus
so busy not to sort the chaff and coincidence.

Faraway, nature has a field day with reverse psychology--
fertile entanglements fill a matrix
at closing time no longer welcome to go home
without coats and tails unraveling
and always longer half-lives
set out to test one's mettle to love the land,
to put up and leave handles for branded vandals,
or shut up, pissing on sand castles.

Military Industry: A Child Can Make Mustard Gas

As boys we did our best
to live up to the president’s
idea of going to the moon,
pooling our chemistry sets
and toolkits, borrowing
the kitchen helmet
and books from aunts
with drafted brothers
while the West Coast
learned to get high
in horned-rimmed glasses
and the rest of the country
waited for California
to slide into the Pacific.

So many Greek syllables on the way to the stars,
calculus ifs spinning out escape velocities
prone to variable entangled radiance, quanta
in elongated shadows for every action
a shadow action, the gist always close at hand

in the Bunsen burner’s feeble, steady hope
we took our cue to fold equal parts
sulfur and iron filings over a rising blue glow
enveloping so that it separated into stages,
pellets to stash away in test tubes
while we concentrated hydrochloric acid
following the formula for century gases
in the World Book Encyclopedia.

(Tacoma 2000)

Home

Here on the peninsula letting one’s hair down
has its own apotheosis,

part of a communal unconsciousness bridging Parmenides and Jung
with Rosa Luxemburg’s fashionable visit to escape commodity fetishism

and beat one’s own laundry on stones again—
time slows long enough to dry and to try to find time to dawdle

naked in shallows, as the sight in a movie
of a dugout canoe filled with red feathers.

Just rattling on about it will do the trick, staging more
with candles and incense, honoring not one or a few gods,

but anything that holds a tune,
even in pentatonic scales that seem to have holes in them.

dimes sent spinning undermine conversation. Word of mouth
does not alleviate the gaps, will not reinvent history,

a process—yes, a oneness—no. As if it were more sincere
to keep noses to grindstones found with us one day,

like the comfortable queen-sized bed
your friends have always dreamed you of having,

more impetus to work, go west or east
to seed in the open air of the internet,

planting roots, flashing lights in the landscape
of all the rules attuned to and invented

as we go along watching the turning of leaves,
trespassing forward from fuzzy beginnings.

(Tacoma 2003)

川柳: 階段をねちねちステップダンス好き

階段をねちねちステップダンス好き

(lit. tr.: Nagging about the stairs while liking to step dance)

‘Scientists Say Fukushima Cause of Mutant Butterflies’

‘Scientists say Fukushima cause of mutant butterflies’
symbols of imperial office, not the person
as in 1881 song No. 17, sung to ‘Lightly Row’ and ‘Hänschen Klein,’

‘Butterflies, butterflies, stop on the rappini,
if you tire of rappini blossoms, move on to the cherry

as half lives round down over time
bob up and down in any weather

and stay in the cherries in the glorious reign
stay and play, stay a moment to play’

hide-and-seek, categorically spring—
eluding seasons in any weather
wings flop the butterfly and drop.

Time to change the soil on land and shore,
as time marches forward
pushing celestial light, holding
changing the soil and water of the earth
to carry on as if again as if
the bottom will fall through as if
again, in magic puffs butterflies rise
again in lovely songs and multitudinous--
modern, blown by the wind
quietly mutating what shadows and stays,
waiting for a voice to say we are real still
no longer sewn to our hiding as one
under a great hand or song.

Who would trade the earth, air and water
for the solvency of a few, a handful of expedience?
If we cannot plant our spinach and tomatoes
we’ll read by kerosene. What refugees in the Northeast
would turn to turn their cesium to the poisoned earth,
would dare blame themselves than speak out
gathering a new category of butterfly and spring?

Note: Reading many “current events senryū” (satirical haiku on social themes) from the major newspapers in Japan (Asahi shinbun, Mainichi shinbun, and Yomiuri shinbun), following the sentiments expressed in the verse I became quite disturbed by what appeared in the news and poetry to be a joint corporate-government stonewalling as well as deadly ineptitude in the handling the nuclear crisis. Given how neoliberalism renders new norms of thinking by which it offers amoral and by common standards unethical parameters of judgment—based purely on values expressed in mottos such as “profits are all that matters” which is justified by “the free market forces solve all problems” with leads to privatization and the shift from a democracy to a corporate oligarchy—such corporate-government indifference even to human lives is not totally unexpected, though still shocking. Obviously, the expense of shoring up the Fukushima reactors, known to be threatened by tsumani, was deemed unprofitable, and the delusional fiction propagated by nuclear energy companies seems to have led in the case of TEPCO to an actual belief in their own propaganda that there could be no problem, no contingencies for worst-case scenarios, even after 3/11. Of course planning for non-profitable contingencies such as tsunami, which are not uncommon, was not their only mistake. Information about radioactivity was kept from the public as if they were expendable. As Alain Badiou (whose work inspired this poem) might argue: the people of Japan are now inexistants when confronted with the nuclear power corporations alliance with governments in Japan. Of course, to assert their existence as Japanese is possible (as in the recent weekly demonstrations): continue the categorical play and enjoy losing oneself in the alignment of fashion discourse and the latest gadgetry with being a consumer, or to stand up for the people of not only Fukushima but Japan as a whole, and follow as Germany (but with even better reasons) a non-nuclear power policy to match the non-nuclear proliferation policy. I have lived in Japan many years in the past, and still feel it is my second home after Taiwan. This issue seems very important (enough to wake me from my blogmatic slumbers).

Human—Nature

Society gentry unload Great Danes
for a bite at the designer doggie bakery
in the heart of homeless Pioneer Square—
palaces of neon toys and metered movies
zoning would push off into the sticks
while Seattle busies with aerobics to see
how the next rows of shoulders turn out.

After the crackdown we ditch the hotties
and eat alone, waiting
unless you can tell the mayor
to her televised face
you miss discount aerosol spray
dripping buffoonishly in obscene alleys.

Gaudy signatures remind one of the virtue of humility
lest the animals wandering in us
creep out the girl walking in those guys

while those others mark up the map
like new breeds of deeds and trust by bus line.

One only wishes, while the open garden makes open rebellion futile,
for every lovely girl we’ll find a boy who’s nubile.

And while half of what we say is half empty
half the salmon are half up river for nothing

and for every island lost to global warming
somewhere higher another McDonald’s is forming.

So we summon shaman to police the perimeter—
and say Sorry! What we’ve done to our earth is shoddy . . .

and go on sewing echoes to empty bodies,
the friendly market waiting at an undisclosed singularity

ready to upload with just a finger,
while in accord with the committee,

we remain calm, left to linger.

Harvest Light

By August the corn patch was unflappable.
We'd weeded out litters of cats napping between stalks
but at what price? All polls ran against them
and we emerged hand in hand in the shade
of sycamores, auditing locusts for daily functions
of annual patterns. Their curse-resuscitated syndrome
drove in beehive clouds anticipating typhoons
then broken, rolled off like false eyelashes on natural beauty
to titillate the next superpower watching from a noisy café.
The board would like all the loose ends tied together,
no mess-ups this time; no prints nor random patchwork
in the apple eye of 7-11 cameras. As we speak
logistics are assembled in all consuming languages
buttoned up or barbequed according to folded instructions in fine print.

The key is steering clear of the same centre
like a jockey ducking in a tunnel that only the horse can see.
Children grow accustomed to the rules
as if they were DNA rather than a ploy
to extract what rises to the horizon each time one tries to outrun it,
always studious, as mothers still shoulder us,
translate mother tongues to ground our vocables
from the blood mists of warriors parting Euclidean flesh
in the rainy season--historically of course--all that’s all folks.
What can we do but build canoes and rafts
or face house arrest? The plum blossoms flower a code
across the land: the boy is king, mapping the land
in surprise emissions, a general strike in the clouds.
But there is no one to touch as the light wrinkles away
into the waves and we bid adieu, nestle in to man our stations.

Lofty Fog

The whispers from below reach Midas (who just text-messaged)
tone-deaf or not, the balances play out
a prudent policy to let things slide,
despite talk of yesteryear.
Ah, yesteryear. We used to read poetry
about the rearrangement of the senses.
Now they download The Songs of Experience for Dummies
and in the city oracles crash on a dime, and it's normal.
Students don't blink at it. Everything dwindles
and no one wants to hear about
the narrow escapes, how grandparents
swam raging rivers (yawn), how all the bridges
were barricaded or blown to kingdom come (looking at watch),
or left breathing through straws heroically
in electronic swamps gurgling methane—
the settling of accounts long awaited
and all too common in the valley.
In the valley no one notices babies
left to cry off the devil inside
under soft neon stars inflated just beyond doorjambs,
fostered safely for the lofty fog to burn off.

Old Town Starbucks

They cancelled the Americano—too Italian near Scandinavian docks.
Generations later pastors still call on decorum
to undo lavishly Vatican wallpaper zoomed out of focus.
How nice it would be to fold the coasts together
so the spare interior might grow to the water and light
breaking the strong silent types side by side Hollywood housewives,
just as Makahs on the northern tip of the Olympics
after 70 years of being endangered try their harpoons
at the latest swell of whales—
remembering how to skin a whale is not easy:
what to do with all the blubber on the beach?
Make a Makäh eau de cologne?
The toddlers enjoy training wheels
and the gathering sound effects of red bicycles
scraping the sides of double-parked Mercedes.

Yet here I am seeking caffeine sin extras, a modest tall Americano for here,
the cheapest item off the menu, I must want room for cream then?
as if I were my great grandfather, an immigrant miner
too old to shovel but sturdy enough to man the dusty elevator shaft.
Where is your accent? I say, from yon sticks, where everyone builds
along roads they just invent as they go along
to the peril of those walking their horses and salting roses to ward off the deer.
Sometimes roads will accidentally bump into one another
and if there’s no room for proper cul-de-sacs
or they are broken through with the right codes and lawyers
you end up with thoroughfares, and corners along crossing paths
where others apply to change the zoning to cash in on a gasoline stand or grocer.
But, I’m really from even further out, forest fast disappearing
like the spotted owl looking in through the out door, unruffling itself
and spreading its wings to fly back from the horizon.
Here in Old Town there are few trees.
The mills took the good ones long ago
during trade in rubella blankets clearing the land of locals
and planting others around the new boarders working literally for nickels.
The trees here had rings wide enough to remember more than anyone living
and making the newbies nervous, coming from the burbs,
here to vie for views of the bay, more reasons for pruning more
to finally begin to relax, circling on riding mowers with self-mulchers,
scattering whatever grows back, trimming the edges
keeping things from shifting
so we look forward to a bright day flowering.

(Appeared in Mannequin Envy)

WikiLeaks shows how postmodern indifference has indeed functioned as an instrument of global capital

One thing that can be gleaned from the WikiLeaks phenomenon is that the capitulation to postmodern vagaries (a position it seems stubbornly taken and reasserted most curiously by my former mentor Steven Shaviro), itself can be shaken when new revelations -- truths in the sense of undeniable historical enunciations -- shake the glamorous blandness of the postmodern. Indeed we see that the postmodern status quo -- "who knows what the truth is, let's have fun with it all" -- is broken, as is business as usual. This is new: usually corporate media tries to ignore any non-sanctioned information, yet it cannot brush aside such newsworthy tidbits and succeeding chaos that turn the wheels of the corporate media itself. Facts that shake markets are both intricately bound up in the mechanisms of global capital and can no longer glibly uphold pretensions of being removed from real economic concerns (a growing gap between rich and poor accompanying globalizing economies, including the US) and environmental destruction through global warming, dam construction, and general pollution, etc.

Typhoon Megi

has nowhere to go: a focused holding
over last year’s losses, not to laugh at, a pattern
clearing the Sea of Taiwan, heading ashore
as a cold front at Okinawa condenses
the turbulence: more rain off the Pacific in a day
than in Carson City in a decade,
and you say the door has closed
too hard, answers too slow to come.
When the train stopped for the flooding you were right
not to take roads leading home, now covered in boulders and mud,
buses trapped or fallen off the coastal highway caved away…
Angry tourists from abroad complain in standard dialects clear and harsh.
The hot spring hotel has no hot water and you call to recall my faults,
my unbearable neglect. I want to go to bed early
before the day’s fatigue takes us down.
My cell phone is down to the last red line
after 2 a.m. I am difficult to get to know, granted –
forsaken by givens like the gods,
overwhelming happiness leftovers from old battles and empires
still divvying their grids of species in the present
folding the world away for a rainy day, living for a rainy day.
It is a pleasure to be stuck in the rain,
but please – spare me, clouds of mercy, storms I can’t see.

My friend says there’s a hot spring around the corner.
We soak, talk about how it’s not working.
He shrugs. We all want to be good, to go along.
Doors close in long accordion patterns
following us in another us for losing ourselves
though already taken, over the years, lost loves:
the older the more there’s just remainders remaining:
couples never broken from innocence into the light:
abandoned movies given in to their own automatic motions, leaving
habitually: a world so large now it crosses its fingers in series of series
so serious, politicians are already pushing for a new highway
to open up the last backwoods, where I live
and you will never return, for a door, some keys passed between us,
and a storm. I will try again tomorrow to go home to Hualien,
to let go, open my heart more, be lost again and taken down.

六月の川柳 Two senryu from my trip to Kyushu this June 六月の川柳

Japanese originals　with English approximations.

込む駅をお洒落優先一歩一歩に
komu eki o oshare yuusen ippo ippo ni
[So slow stepping through the crowded station--all the fashion queens]

身がみられお腹をきつく仲良く気
mi ga mirare onaka o kitsuku nakayoku ki
[Given a looking over, I suck in my gut, hoping to make friends]

June 2010

Global Positioning

The symphony gathers talk dying down.

The smell of bugs burning on dusty lamps
reaches the balcony.

Children speculate which came first:
peanuts or peanut butter.

To keep the water moving
cymbals opened to bassoons and cellos

and traffic stopped in a swoon…
and mommy released the brakes….

You wonder if you’re the only one
gone bananas with such gut precision.

Time to shake oneself up to a plate,
any place making your soul feel so big it swims out with the ball.

Mosquitoes

—after Chen Chien-wu 陳千武

For now the standing water stands down.
It’s all over, in no one’s honor.
United, the buzzing charming,
divided, viral advertising.

The angelic hum no longer lulls us
all landings have been sprayed
and under control.
We put our souls to the wheels of motor cameras
and promise broadcasts across the land
as standing water stands down.

Sonnet

We used to raise antennae like mold
taking flight from an alabaster landscape
then lean softly with the wind
as if history had been blown up.
It used to take us hours to wind down,
making winding up as much a surprise.
The day never ended.
Now all we do is wind up.

Who’d dare touch the earth again,
not the stony essence running through it?
We’ve been hacked, on suspension,
no one ever looking, always watched.