The Potter

Images have power,

they capture a moment in time exactly as it existed,

photo revealing details we overlook in our real-time lives.

My eyes gaze through a frame to a man moulding a pot.

Careful with his hands, my countryman focuses on each crevice, soulfully sculpting with his mind pressed on clay edges,

Fingers blend in unison forming lips and curves.

Eyes fixed with his arms automatically moving after years of training,

What was it made for?

An urn to hold the ashes of an ancestor?

Or a planter, standard to every shop in the province.

Like a star I’m seeing something fifty years old,

Beautiful in it’s brilliance but a light ancient and extinct,

How loud was his life?

Did he fall into quiet desperation with the soul crushing forces of routine?

Did he love as intensely as he promised himself he would.

Did he make promises he didn’t keep?

Did he make promises he forgot to keep?

As present experiences log themselves in memory and then fade in blur of human recall,

Remember that there once was a time when our ancestors had to act.

From the battlements fought across our continents,

to the mass starvations endured to find salvation.

Miles were walked across mountains with these feet while sheets of ice scorched faces.

Spirit fuelled a drive for discovery,

reaching across open oceans with moonlit white caps  battering leaking boats.

We are the result of a four million year journey.

Their lives layer upon ours,

sculpting our bodies with their actions.

Their fight, alive in our veins,

I’m a channeler to the past,

The current urn of my ancestors with the understanding that Chips add character.

Our talk stories are written with every word spoken,

every slight stare and listening ear,

Every smile I share reflects my past, forward.

So what promises will you keep?

And Where are you willing to step?

Daily Dose

Ticking, blasting, pointing, hitting, grooving, freezing.

Movement described through verbs in dances.

How do we learn movement?

Not merely through repetition, but focusing on each muscle, riding the wave of energy that flows through us.

Ancient chiense described that as Chi,

lockers described that as Funk.

Chi and funk, 2 words to describe a feeling,

I wish i could drink a cup of that right now.

Pictures not needing a 1,000 words.

 

As a half naked ninja

As you can see from my pictures, I was crazy.

I still am, but somehow through working in this world i have kept a lid on my insanity.

My Dad just emailed me these photos, and it triggered an emotion inside of me that i couldn’t put my finger on. 

Nostalgia? no. 

It was something deeper than a daydream of my past.

The photo made me happy.

Being an Asian American studies major we constantly analyzed our identity.

Analyzing family factors, media etc, and through that soul searching and critical annalysis our mind spins into this crazy idea that we need to be an identity defined by struggle and free of external input from the white man.

No nerds, no dragon ladies.

The problem with critical analysis is that when you become so enamored with things that you are not, our focus becomes empty.

We leave behind everything that we are.

This includes creating a revolutionary identity based upon organizing and opposition to oppressive forces. 

Now by now your head might be swimming and mine was trying to get that stuff out, but let me refer back to the picture.

All that stuff is gone from there.

I don’t have this academic cap on, I am not thinking about how my actions reflect upon the community.

 

I just am. As silly and unapologetic about my crazy ideas. With fewer words, and a lot more woppie cushions.

slipping into sky

I cant think of walking when i stomp through a storm.

The puddles wash the sides of my gritty sole and the mud mixes with rain insanely,

brown droplets flutter from my feet, and it all repeats.

i stomp down the street umbrella in hand but without it’s arms fully extended.

I like the rain.

It’s coolness sinking into my skin and rolling from my lips.

I look up eyes wide open as it pours from a marble sky.

Black streaks entwine with grey gradiants awash in a white glow emitted by an unseen sun.

breathing heavily, i look back down the block seeing the trail i’ve blazed.

Some of it messy and at other times executed with such care and spurts of passion.

Home calls and I answer.

To sleep another eight hours as the Grey sky fades to black, the curtain resets and the sun appears right on cue.

Sub

It makes me wonder.

The clank of the change and subterranean pipes that flow through cities.

Shots through the ground scream down cement tubes to stop reset and flow in the opposite direction.

Clockwork setup in the gloom of fluorescent lights.

Police, business men, homeless, mental illness.

All bustling twenty feet under the ground.

While the world above waits in traffic.

Waiting, waiting, delays broken only by hurried urgency.

The narrow sprint ending in an abrupt search for a seat furthest from people.

Waiting on cold cement seats Only to end by waiting in motion.

The screech of the third rail sends us speeding in the same direction it has always taken us.

Such insanity as the world passes as pictures in glass frames.

Arg.

Depth is hard to scoop when the ice cream is frozen.

The situation.

I’ll be honest.

I miss being in love.

And I don’t use the word Love lightly.

Some people use Love liberally, Spreading it’s usage over every little object of desire.

I refer to real, aching, can’t sleep type of love.

The hungry, sweaty, “is this what insanity feels like type love.”

The kind of love that makes you feel like a fool no matter what you say.

The voice quivering, time stopping, seeing their face in statue of perfection type love.

It wasn’t that long ago that i was sneaking into bedrooms and pissing off parents.

I remember nights of nothing but just feeling warmth.

bodies curved, silhouetted in the sheets counting down the hours till dawn.

I would never sleep those night.

Laying awake in the bed soaking  into every moment because i knew daylight would take me away.

I miss missing you.

I miss throwing myself into every instance living without consequence.

I miss being addicted, and needing you now.

My mode has cooled.

Love has been secondary to my life.

Seeing you i see the future before me without you.

Because I’lll be gone in a year and my mind is way too organized to make this time investment.

The movement calls and her voice makes me realize everything else is secondary.

Maybe next lifetime I can be happy.

But right now I got too much work.

(Subject to revision should another situation arise)

Summer Madness

Cool and the gang swung by my work.

swept me up with dust clouds tracing our path.

Easy listening on the radio plucked the strings of the guitar.

My back lay slumped in my seat as the breeze soaked into my hair,

giving it life like currents flowing through the LA smog.

the freeways were free and even the panhandlers were at peace.

I rolled up to some sun kissed oranges for four bucks a bag and kissed each seed until it planted itself into the ground. 

Orange trees rose from the cracks this time not to be plucked by migrant workers but hungry children.

And slowly the city changed.

Each shriveled seed planted uplifted concrete.

Cars opened their people and eyes emerged.

each pair lured by golden spheres this time not out of greed,

but wonder.

And the world danced.

process 2

These damn things cannot be written quickly,

I spend time, looking at the screen,

my back hurts, from a hunched lean,

Graduating softened the brain, my words written simply,

I chase after words trying to lay them out nicely,

forcing it out my face is turning green,

I want to throw up, but then i would have to clean,

This poem is so weak it’s sickly,

There will be a change in fate,

If you are still reading this I applaud you,

bear with me for a few weeks and this process will bear fruit,

the words will shift into a pleasing state,

These poems will rot reforming anew,

My voice will overcome form and I will no longer be mute.

old

This is the time when most will forget,

it moves quicker and our minds seem blind,

I don’t want to be that crazy old man on the porch full of regret,

letting my body get older with my mind resigned,

Every week passes from weekend to weekend,

Drunken nights black out hours of existance,

words uttered and actions regretted are difficult to mend,

greeted instead with silence,

Have I drunk away the years never to be replaced,

life being sucked by a bottle drinking me in,

My mask to the world is straight-faced,

underneath it all i wear a grin,

laughing at my own stupidity,

because we are all fools in this insanity.