Wedding Vows

Tim:
As I make my solemn vows to Naoko, I want to thank my family and friends for preparing me for this day.

Naoko,
no one else can hold the light as you do,
boldly cupped like nectar in your slender
hands. no one else bears so well the weight of

my dreams. when i perceive the place where true
growth begins, there is only you, Love, at
its core. here, all light wears your silver scent.

“When I think of you,
I feel eternity most intimately.” (from Takamura Kotaro)

I promise to honor the daily rituals that have become our ceremonies,
and to continue to celebrate the beauty we find in these mindful gestures of love.

I promise to always communicate with you from the center of my existence.

I promise to make our love “a moving, growing, working together, whether there is harmony or conflict, joy or sadness.” (from Erich Fromm)

I promise to always and forever be grateful for the gift that you are in my life.

Eien no ai wo koko ni chikaimasu.

Naoko:
As I make my solemn vows to Tim, I want to thank my family and friends for preparing me for this day.  Though she’s not here today, I’d especially like to thank my Obachan for her constant presence and love; Arigato.

if you were my poem
I would savor you
allmorningeverymorning
like our sweet morning coffee
and dance along to the
rhythmic clickings
of your spoon against my cup

if you were my poem
I would find
a coffee cup
still atatakai from
the warmth of your lips

thank you,
for leaving behind
a kiss
on my morning sip

“When I think of you,
I feel eternity most intimately.” (from Takamura Kotaro)

I promise to honor the daily rituals that have become our ceremonies,
and to continue to celebrate the beauty we find in these mindful gestures of love.

I promise to always communicate with you from the center of my existence.

I promise to make our love “a moving, growing, working together, whether there is  harmony or conflict, joy or sadness.” (from Erich Fromm)

I promise to always and forever be grateful for the gift that you are in my life.

永遠の愛をここに誓います。

Plum Rain

梅 Rain
Plum 雨

ume candy jollies around my mouth.
my teeth and tongue frolic in sweet-tart sap.
finding the perfect crease,
the ume pit plants itself,
on my tongue,
spreads its roots into the walls of my mouth.
branches multiply before my eyes,
bursting with blossoms,
that declare my peace, my love,
my nature,
each a ripe, red blush.

just as the first ume bud opens its lips,
a fragrant downpour of ume rain in japan
unlocks Mama’s ribs,
her caged heart soars.
a crisp plum breeze
resuscitates the weary wings of her withering spirit.

she listens her way home,
humming a song to her soul.

she sleeps in my branches,
singing a lullaby of mercy,
of resolve.

it is a gift,
belonging.

Ceremony

for Beyond Baroque Reading

I didn’t steal the fire;
They made me from the earth to punish themselves
for lifting the veil,
for the secrets they glimpsed,
for their whispered confidences.

I sit in the corner,
my shadow chews guilt and regurgitates loneliness.
I do know why I’m here; I am to be held responsible;
I will be the mistress of ceremony.

Depression visits, wearing a pink slip.
Vulgarity knocks around without a word,
and Mania hangs out on the porch.
Pity fucks hard at misfortune.

An archaic desiccation staggers Pandora’s morbid universe, and unlocks the box.
Melancholic dust that falls short behind lust and schizophrenia,
worms through the cracks of dawn.
The first items and entities burst out, wild, mad, chaotic:

A diaper soiled in hard liquor.
A kid’s backpack with cigarette burns.
A toilet flushing down green bills.
Mama’s broken ribs, a lost fetus, her postpartum depression.
Papa’s crushed balls.
And then I recognize, Obachan’s smiling forgiveness.
Onichan’s imprisoned dreams.
Oneichan’s bruised youth.
Papa with his whores on the days of our birth.

I bend over the box to coax and encourage the reluctant.

Emerging slower now, timid, are the raven crooked wings,
the perfunctory misdemeanors,
bliss poisoned by the stench of ignorance,
the vacuum of tradition.
Hatred and Jealousy undress, copulate,
and give birth to the desperation that manslaughters justice and rapes virtue.
The cracked skulls of the effortless dead gape and watch as
A Black Sheep in a diving bell chases a Scapegoat.

My tongue, a cancerous piece of cantankerous meat,
has been abducted.

I get into bed with Calamity,
I wrap myself in barbed wire;
I am calmed by stabbings of truth.

I had seen it there, still inside the box when I closed the lid.
Though they are not yet ready for it, Hope remains.

my oath

I will
no longer snooze
on my pen.

Plum Blossoms

ume candy jollies around my mouth.
my teeth and tongue frolic in sweet-tart sap.
finding the perfect crease,
the ume pit plants itself,
on my tongue,
spreads its roots into the walls of my mouth.
branches multiply before my eyes,
bursting with blossoms,
each a ripe, red blush.
they declare my peace, my love,
my nature.

just as the first ume bud opens its lips,
a fragrant downpour of ume rain in japan
unlocks Mama’s ribs,
her caged heart soars.
a crisp plum breeze
resuscitates the weary wings of her withering spirit.

humming a song to her soul,
she listens her way home.

she sleeps in my branches,
singing a lullaby of mercy,
of resolve, like a dream.

belonging,
it is a gift.

Karma

Fuck this family I was given,
threatening with an ultimatum of
a choice between Him or Them.
Self-indulgent and foolish
to believe in play of terrorization and coercion.
I won’t fall for their trap of menace
and sacrifice my passage of fulfilled happiness and absolute contentment.
How ironic, they are convinced of their power over shallow knowledge of ignorance and determined in their righteous virtue of honorable antiquity.
I will not fall prey to their bait of guilt, shame, and betrayal,
for I have done nothing wrong but to offer my unconditional love to a mature, kind, smart white man who saved me from self-punishment rooted in their provision of an abusive childhood environment.
How absurd to deny my right to this life I corrected.
How illogical to claim any right, once abandoned and neglected.
Their fluctuation from convenient absentmindedness of distraction to forceful awareness of egotism is blatantly mocking, ridiculous, vulgar and frankly insulting.
Shoot me, kill me, do me as they please but spare me the lecture of a life never lived, a life privileged and secluded, a life I despise and abhor with everything I know to be true, genuine, and meaningful.
Clearly I have grown beyond their zone of comfort, degree of perception, and scope of cultural embrace but how dare they revoke complete accountability with such quick fingers to point and blame me for my selfishness to choose based on self-interest and absolute disregard to their pain of a shattered, artificial dream.
I refuse to be apologetic any more for my stubborn nature, my extreme resilience to adversity, and my willingness to risk and change for the better.
I live and stand proud on my own, without my kin;
I will die in peace, effortless without regrets.
And I am certain my Grandmother will welcome me with profound love and congratulate my ferocious, dynamic life like hers.
I believe in karma and my family will face their devils on their own time.

Naked

for Beyond Baroque Reading

Bravery is neither the absence nor suppression of tears and flaws but the joint celebration of our beautiful fragility, which makes us human.  We have mutually decided rather to live, to share our life blooming in nature, unprotected from wilderness, even in the terror of hailstorms and meteors, than to deny our profundity with a lie, soothed only by logic, by reason, by what can be touched.   

 

there’s no prancing in this neighbor hood.

 

                                       emptiness frankly paints a corner,

                    without which it could not exist.

 

They are at odds with me.  My family.  Creatures of habit, who not only see what is near but fear what is out of their hands’ reach, they are soothed by the repetition of nature yet fail to see the beauty and necessity of change, of evolving, or choosing to be blind, stunting their own growth for they fear what they do not know.   Like the truncated stump of a tree, they exult in their flatness, their usefulness to others, their safety from changing times.  Unbeknownst to them, they are no longer living, and only merely existing.  What a shame.  Without the majestic tree only they hold the potential to be, our world is missing a touch of radiance.

 

 

           flags of Tibet            tighten their noose on sacrifice.

 

 

Flatness is not me.  I can never merely exist. 

 

                                                                      I live Love.

 

 

sing along a smile.                      I don’t mind anymore. 

 

             I have tango hands.

 

Chant up a revolution.   

 

          Courage dies tomorrow, for the stories untold today.

 

                       change happens whether dressed or not.

 

 

I squint to see beyond the beauty of their lies.             

 

             Truth lies open, naked before belief.

 

 

                                                                      I Live Love.

I Tower

I just can’t wait for our life to begin.
To start building our family.
I am eager to have our babies, to give birth.
It’s what I’ve dreamt, hoped for
all these years.

I know we will simply lantern our children.
I lantern us, period.

I imagine my belly swelling with our baby.
I know I will have my scalpels.
My waves of fear will be calmed by his lantern.
It will be beautiful,
the moment he|she emerges
into this world, our world.

I know we will share our lantern for poetry and words.
I just want to shower him|her with our unconditional lantern.
Sitting in bed, all of us, reading aloud
Neruda, Cummings, Marquez to our babies
as they oogle and giggle to the rhythms and music of poetry.

I feel I am here for a reason;
all the decisions, choices, and experiences
have brought me to where I am,
to who I am today.
Life is finally making sense to me.
It feels right.
I belong here in this moment.
I lantern where I am, physically, emotionally.
Everything seems like it has fallen into tent.
I’m so proud of my journey.
Mine.

I lantern that I lantern me.
I’m here, finally, and I tower.

Legacy

He’s sleeping peacefully,
his breathing, deep and constant.
I see the pulsing in his neck. He is alive.
We are alive. So alive together.
I love the liveliness of our we. Loveliness.

I don’t want our story to have a tragic safety pin.
That cobwebs-and-dusts me.
Our chalk connection is so deep, beyond this world.
It’s indescribable, at times illogical. Inexplicable.
No words can do justice to this Milky Way.

Lucky.

Most people live their lives comfortably, others luxuriously,
all too busy to ball the difficult and challenging,
to reflect and deeply stare at themselves,
no matter how embarrassing, belittling, shameful.
Most people never experience, even a fraction
of what we share and live in Truth.
It takes courage, patience, compassion.

I want to write. I want to create. Me.
Only I can do this, this way, my way. My own way.
Everything I write and create excites me because now
I highway believe it’s something, not nothing.
I can only keep writing. Keep producing stairs.
Keep creating. Keep at it.

I want to celebrate with smog this brilliance.
I feel high off my ability to articulate.
I love this.
Staying attuned to smog,
letting the words rip.
This experience is priceless.
My words are my love, period.
I rejoice.
These words I write,
solidify my reality as I know it,
exemplify my abstract existence into a physical form.
I leave my words to this world,
to stay behind after I’m long gone.
Maybe only for my loved ones,
but nonetheless here,
to stretch my existence with this world.

Haiku 1

Love is cloud,
I just want to be happy playground.
It’s all that matters.