sick verse

"Most things begin here in the city.
When the A train runs uptown
it rattles am orchard in Texas
causing fruit to fall from trees.
And when a glass of beer is knocked
over in a bar on Tenth Avenue the sunset
spills across the sly on the West Coast."

- Kevin Pinkington

kinda tired, but not of books

Oh man, my energy levels are up and down recently. I feel like one day, I'm pretty energized; the very next day, I feel sapped. I'm not very sure what it is, since I'm getting a pretty consistent sleep. Maybe I need to sleep earlier?

Actually, I know what it is. I haven't been exercising, but it's been hard since my surgery to get up and just ... play some basketball (aside from the fact that no one plays anymore).

But I pump myself up artificially sometimes by listening to upbeat music in the car prior to my meeting. It helps, but I really have to try to pump myself up - which is, in it of itself, kind of depressing lol.

I'm sure I'm way behind on this, but Tahereh Mafi, an underclassman of mine at SUA, published her book a while ago (at the age of 23...) and is all the rave recently in the teen-fiction world. In fact, Fox bought the film rights to her book "Shatter Me." This is really inspiring. She apparently wrote the book for fun, which just baffles my mind. Check out the summary of her and the book here.

 

"Marketing Life for Those of Us Left"

I've been addicted to Ada Limon's poetry. I never opened myself up to contemporary poetry until I read and listened to some of her work. I spent all night watching some of her readings and fell for her prose. I've been trying to identify what pulls me in - I think it's the straight-forward, country-music-like american lyric; stubborn yet so soft and natural; and somewhat fragile; in a story-like stream of thought.

Here's a bio from the Academy of American Poets:

Born March 28, 1976, Ada Limón is originially from Sonoma, California. As a child, she was greatly influenced by the visual arts and artists, including her mother, Stacia Brady. In 2001, she received an M.F.A. from the Creative Writing Program at New York University.Her first collection of poetry, Lucky Wreck (Autumn House Press, 2006), was the winner of the 2005 Autumn House Poetry Prize. She is also the author of This Big Fake World (Pearl Editions, 2006), winner of the 2005 Pearl Poetry Prize, and Sharks in the Rivers (Milkweed Editions, 2010). Her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, the Harvard Review, andPleiades.A 2001-2002 fellow at the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center, she has also received a grant from the New York Foundation for the Arts and won the Chicago Literary Award for Poetry.She currently lives in Brooklyn, New York and is working on a novel.

Enough jabbering, here she is reading "Marketing Life for Those of Us Left."

poetry is the law

Here's something to chew on:  According to this dude, Innis Claude said that law is the poetry and politics the prose of government.  What a nice analogy. It's not as if I am changing what I think when I write, whether that be the law, politics, or prose, anyway.  So here's another re-blog from that dude I mentioned above, directly from an opinion authored by the Court of Appeals of Michigan:

A wayward Chevy struck a tree
Whose owner sued defendants three.
He sued car’s owner, driver too,
And insurer for what was due
For his oak tree that now may bear
A lasting need for tender care.

The Oakland County Circuit Court,
John N. O’Brien, J., set forth
The judgment that defendants sought
And quickly an appeal was brought.

Court of Appeals, J.H. Gillis, J.,
Gave thought and then had this to say:
1) There is no liability
Since No Fault grants immunity;
2) No jurisdiction can be found
Where process service is unsound;
And thus the judgment, as it’s termed,
Is due to be, and is,

Affirmed.

Nice.

Brahm's phone, lyric, and meal

Went to the Brahm concert on Friday with my mom. It was good! We finally decided to sit somewhere other than the back, but ironically, we were so close that it was difficult to see the orchestra.  But we had a perfect shot of the conductor and violin soloist.  I failed to take any good pictures, but this'll give you an idea of where we were:

I could hear the bow slide freely across the strings, sometimes roughly, other times smoothly. And damn, that soloist was good in Second Symphony in D major (though I didn't enjoy his beer belly).  Best of all was the conductor, who was a mere 30 yrs old.  He's a European who did his thing back home, and began conducting on the world stage at 24.  Not only was he young, but you could feel his vitality in his conducting.  He was literally jumping around and swinging his arms fiercely across his body.  And best of all, he was having so much fun, like a youthful little boy.  He was so good he made headlines for his Smetana's Overture for Bartered Bride (so fun! - Imagine the young conductor moving his feet like a little leprechaun to this!).

I also gave in and finally ordered my HTC Thunderbolt.  I won't go into all my phone karma, but I've found it extremely difficult as a youth leader to do SGI activities without a good phone.  Constantly on the go and scheduling meetings here and there.  I should have done this a long time ago but I had determined to make it a present to myself for securing a job.  Instead, I'm going to use this for the sake of activities, and for those activities as my sincere contribution to kosenrufu.

Oh, and I've been addicted to Ada Limon ever since Heain informed me of her. I am NOT a fan of love poetry, with its its unnecessary romantic flairs, depressing endings and emotional implosions, but damn, she pulls this one off pretty well:

Maybe my limbs are made

mostly for decoration,

like the way I feel about

persimmons. You can’t

really eat them. Or you

wouldn’t want to. If you grab

the soft skin with your fist

it somehow feels funny,

like you’ve been here

before and uncomfortable,

too, like you’d rather

squish it between your teeth

impatiently, before spitting

the soft parts back up

to linger on the tongue like

burnt sugar or guilt.

For starters, it was all

an accident, you cut

the right branch

and a sort of light

woke up underneath,

and the inedible fruit

grew dark and needy.

Think crucial hanging.

Think crayon orange.

There is one low, leaning

heart-shaped globe left

and dearest, can you

tell, I am trying

to love you less.

I'll leave you with my go-to meal:

brothers in prose & korean bbq

I love words. I deeply enjoyed story time in elementary school, individual reading time in English class, and yes, I love the power of words in the law. Mastering your penmanship helps communicate a lot more than the words themselves - they inspire, impart courage, compassion, wisdom. Discipline in our words can help many people. That takes meticulous editing, precision in vocabulary, and merciless desire to refine our language.

With this preface, I'd like to introduce two brothers in prose. The first is The Brothers Karamazov. This novel was written by Fyodor Dostoevsky, one of the goliaths of the literary world. I plan to read this particular story over the winter break. Here is a short blurb from the editors:

"Into the framework of the story Dostoevsky poured all of his deepest concerns - the origins of evil, the nature of freedom, the craving for meaning, and, most importantly, whether or not God exists. The novel is particularly famous for three chapters that rank among the greatest pages of Western literature: "Rebellion" and "The Grand Inquisitor" present what many have considered the strongest arguments ever formulated against the existence of God, while "The Devil" brilliantly portrays the banality of evil."

My second brother is George Yamazawa. He recently competed in the individual world poetry slam competition (iWPS). He's placed in a number of previous competitions. Here, he won 4th. Check out his delivery below:



Here's my favorite, from 2009:



I forgot to mention that I finished finals yesterday. One more semester! To celebrate, I went out with a few friends to the 24/7 K-bbq joint, called "Honey Pig," near my house. Here are a few juicy snapshots:

eyes burning in centimeters of ether

As I was driving to an SGI Korean festival in bmore today, I decided to switch my old custom "Japanese 3" CD to my "Hip Hop 2" CD. There is a song in there by Nujabes and others with lyrics that blow away your mind --

Light as a feather as I'm floating through
Readin' through the daily news
Measurin' the hurt within the golden rule
Centimeters of ether I'm heatin' the speaker
Motivational teacher with words that burn people
Seein' the headlines line with discord
It's either genocide or the planet in uproar
Never good.
The rules of paradise are never nice
The best laid plans of mice and men are never right
I'm just a vagabond with Flowers for Algernon
[end]

The metaphors and references to classics in the song are amazing, and it all flows so well together. It reminded me of the perfect poem. I haven't written in a way, so I thought I would try to jump back into the scene (maybe I was never in it). Below was soemething I wrote before and after graduation, which I submitted to a literary competition:

Ivory phoenix wings burning ink I write

Myself a blacksmith; the pen my tool, forging life

My negativity in ashes

My mission emerging in ember

My city in distress I return bringing youth afire

I again lather in the tears of the Chesapeake

Now igniting in it passionate prose

This courageous inferno washing away Charm’s vices

Remembering Key’s beats yes I blaze invariable algorithms

I say passionate and consistent solutions, Baltimore

A strong and steady current Chesapeake majestic

A stream of youth brimming with glorious vitality!

[end]

There is still much work to do. On another note, I got my contacts. They are a pain, though I'm sure it'll get better. Apparently, my eyes are small and my lashes long, so it's difficult to put in contacts. I was litterally at the optometrists trying to put these things in and out for an hour. My eyes became irritated because I touched them so much. I'm supposed to be keeping them in for about half the day for up to two weeks- Yesterday I had them in longer than I should have because it was a bother taking them out (believe it or not it's hard for me to take them out then it is to put them in). Today, I got tired of them so I took them out after 4 hours. I guess it has to do with "getting used to them" so I'll see how it goes :)