A stab at political songs

Song of the First Wave

When I hit the shore,
I carry the silt of the shore
back to it like a child for burial.
Its defenses used to be wider.

Sometimes I rebuild it with what
it has lost (probable runes of Ur).
Sometimes I take away debris
that should be lost (missed mortar,

a tyrant’s donkey-eared head)
to the progress of the tide. We
bring things that shine (aluminum sticks
of gum, fatigued Coke bottles)

from the outer lines
to the eastern jetty
where the ugly
ought to be jettisoned,

where we disorient ourselves
before thundering out
to the ships, bearing crude spoils
that drive them forward, farther in.


* * *

The Wedding (a Han-Hun Union)

The bride weeps. It is the desert. Her husband
has no interest in what lies beyond her veil
but the weave of her skirts, the meal
ground into the evening wedding meal.

Their families each according
to contract have rolled out
registries, tallied what
is there to celebrate:

lunar borders left to dream
undisturbed
by rapid hoof prints in the herb beds
bulging westward;

virgin art of the silkworm,
groaning carts of grain,
seeds of script for their own
recording historian.

The feast is about to begin. Famine
waits at the gate with one hand
begging (it was a dry year)
the guests emptying their fill—

Then the news, the old news
comes crashing like a drunken beast
through cymbal brass—
Other barbarians unbound

by this ceremony
have flown an arrow through
the now shared wall—
the groom’s men swing up their metal

sharp atop their tamed
mares. The bride’s marriage official
gestures on with his writing hand. Her ladies
weep again, but it does not stop. This

is progress. The clangor outside
perennial like certain herbs
from the stubborn garden. And the bride
for him is handsome enough.

Though she cannot ride
and he cannot read, what
rings sterling in the din?
Impress of seal to silk, sword to skin.

What happens when you're too much on the highway

The wedding. It's too big for this box. Still can't quite believe M has come and gone. She is more womanly in a pinch of years, or more horrifically, of hours. The bride was lovely in green gown and white sash. The groom as dignified and solid as I recalled from a sunny day last year in Berkeley. The reception hall held a hundred and a jazz bandstand. Outside, the waters were wrung loose and my yellow umbrella couldn't quite cover me, JN, and V, the erstwhile confidante and fellow sensitive girl/emergent artist/immigrant baby/maker of things.

* * *

I reject mostly what is said in "Lysis", so where then do we return for treatises on friendship? The distance doesn't help. Neither does the rush of external demands on time and decorum. Meanings were well and lost. The rain helped us sleep, but she woke earlier and sat alone in the other room. My story was glanced at on the title page; her drafts of verse a lightly sifted heap already crawling with other commentaries. The guitar was awkward witness.

* * *

If a knows b and b understands a so well, then why does each feel misplaced in his little allotment in the wunderkamer? Has there been an earthquake we didn't read about?

ornament

Just got a surprise msg from E (from such sunny salad days in Ithaca)--lovely pics I'd forgotten about for years and the old love just came pouring back for those quiet oaken libraries with the green glass lamps on rainy nights. Wow, nostalgia for a high school moment--never thought that would happen... But TASP was not really high school, but an oasis from it suspended in a separate revolution of time.

Perhaps fittingly, I passed by the old firehouse (a quaint, glass-fronted, curly-fonted affair in white trim) last night and only just noticed that it was in fact the LGBT women's resource center.

JN and I dropped in on J last night working solo on her leaps and lunges. It was a surprisingly good workout. I did much jumping, much to the chagrin of my knees and lower back today. But all will be well for wushu class tomorrow now that I've been shown how to punch properly.

Sanctioned pilfering of JW's story about the boy who cut his hand and how she thought it was just the red tassel from his sword was a success: everyone at workshop like that weird intrusion of an ending, and we just laughed together across the long seminar table. It's so essential to have interesting friends whose lives can revivify your own when it shuts down due to ennui or not enough treats.

PS Yuube, "tomodati" to issyo ni Nihon no resutoran Gombei de oyako donburi tabemasita. Zutto suki desita. Baruntain no hi ni, kankoku no gohan sitai desu n ga atarasii recipes (Eastwind Bookstore ni ikimasita) wa, mata simasen desita.

Bete Feroce

Racquetball was more fun than a dishful of firecrackers with gold fuses. I like its comfortable blend of form and anarchy--thou shalt not serve in the same corner three times in a row! (Cf. but thou canst thrash the blue ball onto any wall en route to the back one and terrify thy partner into little fits... with nearly random ricochets accordant with freaky geometry.) It has more in common with human pinball than one might think. I like the first rule as explained by Indie Rocker K: "DON'T look at your partner! (or you'll get hit)"

Finally ordered special wushu shoes today (they're billed as the #1 preference by Shaolin monks, if monks are allowed to have preferences and attachments to earthly things). I hope they make me extra bouncy bouncy now that one of my connecting jumps has proven to be incorrect all this time. R did a rather savage impression of it yesterday and laughed himself into getting a reprimanding blow from me--apparently, I look like a well-intending bunny (the furry-rumped kind that never acts out of bounds) when leaping from one supposedly menacing stance into a new series of punches and kicks. I guess They, the anointed veterans of the dance, would prefer it if I could pass myself off instead as a ferocious vegan beast (see Monty Python's blood-soaked rabbit that guards the Cave of Aaargh for intensity and gleam of red-eyed intent).

the death of a loved shirt

I don't even want to write about it. But that lovely light cotton affair printed with dust-olive and peach fleurs de lis trimmed with cream crochet and country ribbon is now marred by the rust from a forgotten safety pin that fastened one of the suede ties at the bosom--ugly orange! The irony is that it was only due for a brief soaking, but I left it too long whilst engrossed in composing the woolly mammoth trap G. has set for us in workshop.

Said mammoth needs some slaying and perhaps rearrangement of the bones for an oracular miracle come Wednesday. For the moment, however, I am hungry and still reeling from a giddy nibble of O'Hara's "Why I am Not a Painter" and translating Confucius' analects for 3.5 hours last night. The good news is that I finally got to go that anachronistic deli in North Beach whose windows have been long dressed with country imports: Molinari's. JN and I enjoyed a split sandwich with plump sun-dried tomatoes still retaining their vermilion shape and fresh bolletjes of mozarella on a park bench over which a dark flurry of pigeons occasionally wheeled. The neighborhood church was white gothica and had twin spires that would have gleamed if it had been less overcast.

Best unexpected view of the city worthy of half a postcard: from that of a Chinatown parking garage, third floor looking out to Coit Tower and the Bay Bridge above the seedy laundry lines if you can endure the turns in the stair that collect ancient urines and drink bottles in peeled plastic ruins. The city was coruscating on a breeze.

Oh, and O'Hara rocks!

bo-tay-do...

About two weeks ago I was sitting in Classical Chinese class. It was an insular afternoon. The door to the semi-subterranean room may or may not have been open to the moody weather outside. I'd done my translations already, so it was just marking off imprecisions and syntax to Prof. S's golden standard... Suddenly, I wondered what was the Japanese word for potato. Given my beginner's exposure to the language, I could only guess that in katakana, it would be something like: "bo-tay-do", with elongated vowels in the dashes. I amused myself by saying this newly materialised word over and over again in private... BO-TAY-DO... BO-TAY-DO... ...

Yesterday, there was quite a congregation in the department computer hovel. I asked M, whose trousers matched the hue of her floral-patterned shirt exactly, how one says "potato" in Japanese. Some dreams ARE prophetic: it was BO-TAY-DO after all!