NaPoWriMo 11/30

Oh hell yes:

Update 4/13: Added a title.  Also, realized that everyone in Japan's last name is NOT Akaiwa.

Aita 愛他

Hideaki Akaiwa proved something.

So did Susuma Sugawara.

And the Fukushima Fifty.

They proved that no matter the odds

When disaster strikes…

People go absolutely insane.

NaPoWriMo 8/30: Dirt Hill

Hm.

I don't particularly like how this started, but I kind of like what it became.  True story, actually.  I could conceivably turn this into a story-telling bit, I think.  For now, a poem.

The hill was torn down.

As much as a hill can be torn down.

They carted it off by truckloads

Mounds of crumbling brown like chocolate cake

Speeding off down the road

To wherever dirt goes to die.

Dirt depots.

Grime garages.

I didn’t see it, though.

I just came back one day

Walked through outstretched branches

Empty bottles and used condoms,

Past the broken brick of the old school,

Through the criss-crossed dead trees.

And there it was.

Or, wasn’t.

The field was empty, still littered with brown

Like the world’s most popular dog park,

The sky too empty above me.

The first time I saw it,

I hated it.

A pile of dirt obscuring the green grass.

It was pollutant,

Thick brown pox sickening the sky

The choking smell of earth.

I climbed it,

Because that’s what you do as a kid.

Whatever you don’t like you stand on.

Show it who’s boss.

And the view changed things.

I saw the world unfold at my feet,

Watched the cars I couldn’t drive,

The kids that teased me,

The adults that knocked me aside.

All of it shrunken toys beneath me and my mound.

And I thought

Hey, this could be fun.

Depression interlude

Just thought I'd take a break from all the good stuff happening and all the crappy poetry to express my complete awe-struck horror at some news I learned about last week. I didn't really want to get into it in the middle of an already eventful week, but now I'm free to stress myself out about it.

This shit. This horrible and, worse, not unexpected shit.

Our soldiers taking pictures of themselves after killing and mutilating innocent civilians.  Like they're so hardcore, man, gunning down a small child from behind cover must take REAL guts.

But the truth is, it's not the soldiers.  It's the situation.  The torture of prisoners in Abu Ghraib, the water boarding of detainees in Guantanamo, the bombing of civilian targets during the Persian Gulf, the My Lai massacre in Vietnam.  That's just a few of the AMERICAN atrocities.

And what's the common denominator? It's not the people, what is socially acceptable changes constantly.  So does leadership.  So does the setting.  So does the enemy.  The common denominator is war.  The fact of the matter is that there is no way to wage a humane war.  You put people in insane situations, you can't be surprised when they act insane.

You have to be crazy to kill someone.  Murderers are either placed into impossible situations or are just completely insane.  War cultivates this insanity and we act surprised when our soldiers return and are all kinds of fucked up.  We ENGINEERED that crazy and called it basic training.

The thing that's worse about this is that Obama's still harping on the same tired "America is making the world safe for Democracy" bullshit, when the only thing we show the countries we are safe-izing is a barbarism that puts to shame any of the dictators we oust.

Our soldiers gunned down innocent people and smiled about it.  I think a situation like this deserves a few years of reflection on what we're doing to our people.  Something's gone wrong here.  We've created something toxic in ourselves and until we fix it, the only thing we're spreading is misery.

NaPoWriMo 4/30

I wasn't planning on putting every poem up here, but I'm kind of happy with how this one turned out:

Lost Words
Words are never lost
They are delayed
Clog the pipes of flowing thought
Washed like sediment
Make words taste tangy, metallic,
They find their escape.

Words are never forgotten
They just get stuck.
Pushed to the edges of a smile
Lurking in the parentheses of what you say.
They pulse like stars
Light up the pathways of lost loves and angry ancestors
And they sparkle electric
Never forgotten, sharp and crackling until the day your power is cut.

Words are never defeated
They are just patient.
They are not censored,
They are versatile.
You guard against them,
But they do not relent.
They press at the boundaries,
The edges of your vision
And you can see them.
The lost half of your half-truths,
The full flow of your lies,
They never leave you.
They thicken your blood
Make your heart pound faster
The farther you remove yourself from them
The harder they pull.

Words are inevitable
They never get winded
They never get hungry
They never get angry.
They wait.

But words are not sinister
They’re just not chumps.
You can’t push them around
They come to you for a reason
Because your mouth can shape them best
Because your hand can trace them the way they want.
They’re more than your resumes
Your test answers
Your annual reports.
They’re yours.

And when you touch your hand to paper
They flow from you like blood,
The ink of them drying against the air.
They pass through us like air, like food, like love
Give us life
And then return to a circle older than us.

Our pages, our voices
Complete the circuit.
So you can offer your resistance
But the current carries through.
You are powerless against it
But it is powerful within you.
Plug your feet into the Earth
And let the sparks fly from your fingers.
Because bones decay
But words will stay.

Clips from Spit Dat Feature

Building a Bridge:


Pills Poem


More to come!

NaPoWriMo day 3

All right.  I lied.  I'm going to put this up here.

Sometime between her left hand on my thigh and her right hand on the girl’s breast

I realized it’s hopeless.

We are freaks.

We are masochists on Mondays

Transformational on Tuesdays

And just…weird on Wednesday.

The day-by-day tick of our mortal clock

The resounding sounding of our lives counting down

We do anything to drown it out.

We listen to Justin Beiber.

Pay people to get on stage and talk about their feelings.

Turn the volume up on our impulses

And go to bed with people whose names we don’t know.

We make mistakes with the regularity of insanity

Doing the same thing expecting a different result

Because hitting the ground hurts

But falling feels so good.

We can’t just have a burger

We need it double, with cheese, extra bacon.

We can’t just have our portion

We need it super-sized.

We can’t just walk

We need to drive

We can’t just drive

We need to fly

Rage against the atmosphere

And stick flags into the moon.

After all.

Survival was never enough.

We made guns and bombs

With nations to use them

And signs to protest.

We made condoms so we can fuck more

And churches so we feel bad about it,

Installed God all-powerful

And bit-by-bit are taking his job.

We freaks march to no certain beat

Walk the knife-edge line of good and evil

Eat every goddamn fruit in the garden

And smoke whatever weeds we find!

We are the descendents of bad decisions

Of evolutionary screw-ups,

Living out our tradition of shooting first

And asking questions always.

So stay freaky.

Life’s too short

To just survive.

In other news, I have a youtube channel!

ALSO: NaPoWriMo DAY 1

Since, honestly, I don't have enough going on in my life, what with the Beltway Grand Slam coming up, the month-and-a-half West Coast trip, the move to Baltimore and the starting of my intensive MPH program...

Scratch that.  Since, honestly, I hate myself, I've decided to take up the challenge of NaPoWriMo.  National Poem Writing Month.  Where I have to write a poem a day for all of April or consider myself a failure forever.  I'm doing it with the rest of the DC peeps, so anyone interested should definitely sign up here.

But anyway, this is day one.  I'm probably not going to post everything I write, but for now I'm excited about it (and actually getting it done) so enjoy:

(The italics are sung to the tune of "God Bless America".  That's right.)

While stormclouds gather across the sea

Stormclouds!

Like the specter of revolution

Spreading from Egypt

Like the plague of locusts

Stormclouds!

Like socialized medicine

Spreading from…

Well…

Every first world economy.

And most second world ones.

But there’s nothing more American

Than dying from easily curable diseases.

Let us swear allegiance to a land that’s free!

Free like your choice between paper or plastic

Like you can have your toilet paper quilted

Like you can have your Oreos in 100-calorie-doses!

Free like expressing yourself

Within the negotiated boundaries of your permit

And not too loud,

People are sleeping.

Let us all be grateful for a land so fair!

Fair like giving personhood to corporations

And taking it away from Mexicans!

Fair like the beaches of the Gulf…

Um..

Fair like skyscrapers!

Like super-highways!

Like mega-malls!

Fair like thick gray fogs

Because honestly you can see blue skies anywhere!

As we raise our voices in a solemn prayer.

CHRISTIAN prayer.

George WASHINGTON founded our country.

Not George HUSSEIN.

Or George Feldman.

God Bless America

Land that I love

Like a woman.

But not sexually.

Not until marriage.

Stand beside her, and guide her

Through the night with a light from above.

The light of Democracy

We shine like beacons

Like…

Like the end of assault rifles

Like the burning tails of ICBMs

We deliver barrages of freedom

Rain liberty like hellfire

Roll tank-tread jack-boots

Over countries with strange names

And we never are to blame

And we never are ashamed

We are stars and stripes and flame

From the mountains,

Especially ones with coal

To the prairies

Except during the dust bowl.

To the oceans, white with foam

And factory run-off!

God Bless Americaaa

And FUCK everyone else!