Walk Off!

My People, The River

Nobody says who owns this sand,
So I stole it, for us. No boundaries
For us; every day it's a new line
To cross. Swagger, sword: I stake my claim
Slant and watch it wash away with the next storm.
Every day there's a new story,
Another song and dance. Here by the water
You can't tell if we're daughters or sons,
Demons or thieves. Twenty-five years
Is long enough for us, my family.


Prostitutes and kabuki performers used to live on the riverbanks with the trash that washed up, because the land was always shifting so no one could own it. Kabuki is said to have originated with women performing with a lot of swagger, playing men's roles as well as women's. Then it became popular and moved into the brothels, then it became so dangerous only men were allowed to do it. Kabuki and the Edo superstars all come out of this kind of outlaw swagger. "25 years" is a reference to the inscription on the sword of too-fast-to-live Otori Ichibei.

And tell me this is not the perfect day for the surreal-est of punk poets Megan Volpert to be the judge!

The prompt was a title of "My [blank], the [blank]."

Image: Okuni, said to be the first Kabuki performer. They say she also invented the fashion runway.

What Enforcement Isn't Selective Enforcement?

Courtesans vs. Censors

Who is the man who wins our tears?
Not the one who can keep five wives quiet.
He's the one who wears handcuffs as if they were silk cords.
Who is the man we drink to tonight?
Not the one who forces us to pass the bottle under the table.
He's the one who keeps the ink flowing freely.
Who is the man who opens all gates?
Not the one who makes laws against books.
He's the one who makes us laugh.

The censorship imposed under the Tokugawa shogunate had several prominent victims; artist Katagawa Utamaro and the comic writer, illustrator, tobacconist and all-around flaneur Santo Kyoden being two of the most known. The usual penalty was to spend 50 days in handcuffs. Kyoden did it and went on to marry a few more working girls of the Yoshiwara and to open a tobacco shop. I read in a few places that Utamaro's health never returned after he completed his sentence. Kyoden's story is featured attacked artist No. 3 in this Cracked magazine article. "Five wives" is a reference to the image that got Utamaro in hot water, a gorgeous pass-agg depiction of an historic leader viewing blossoms with his five wives, in a time when ostentatious displays of wealth were in danger of riling the populace.

It's interesting to me that the two big bouts of censor crackdowns in the 18th century came after famines in Japan.

Today's prompt was "authority." Today's judge is Dorianne Laux, an authority in a good way. I'm planning a trip to Oregon right now, so perfect timing.

Image: Santo Kyoden hanging at a mansion, by Utamaro. From what I can figure, he's the one at front left. He looks like he's having a pretty good time.

Right Here, Right Meow

Abandon

Charcoal dawn's approach. Start to coax
A man's body away from warmth,
To yawn, to stand, to walk away
From a cat and a lady.
A boat bobs, no harbor.

Prompt today was use only two vowels out of the alphabet, with Y as a wild card. I read there's a Japanese idiom "all the cats and ladies" that means the same as "every Tom, Dick, and Harry" in English, so that's what that's about.

Today's judge: Christian Bok? You must mean Christian Rock! Cause that's what this experimental poet does. You can check him out here.

Image: The meow, the myth.

No Strings On Me

Bunraku Domestic Drama

I hope you're prepared to devote
A full day to this. It takes time
For this art to unfold. Begin
With a nod to the text and a pledge
To resist deviation. Every move,
From swinging fists to gentle daubs
Of her tears, is done with sticks.
The female puppets don't need legs,
But for this story, they constructed
One lovely foot for him to kiss.
These days it takes three masters
To manipulate just one of them, think of that.
They never hide themselves--we all
Know they're there, and we forget
They're there, as we're spun into
This month's variations of the beloved story:
The lovers love, transgress, and so they must
Die by their own hands, so artfully
Guided by the hands at their backs.
Love it while you're here, but don't
Live it or they'll shut the playhouse down.

Too much to explain on deadline, except to say love-suicide bunraku plays were so popular people started offing themselves and the censors banned the theaters from doing them. Also that Chikamatsu Monzaemon went back to writing bunraku cause kabuki actors messed with his lines too much and bunraku doesn't stand for that kind of thing.

Yeah, missed another day yesterday, I'll slip it in, comme elle a dit. Today's prompt was, god help us, "a swing poem." I tried to resist the obvious.

Today's judge is Boss, Todd Boss. Check him here. He works poetry in with public art and films.

Image: Masanobu. Now who's pulling the strings.

Scope Creep

Telescope

Tell me, spyglass, what do you see?
I see tiny dutchmen waving at me.
I can almost hear them across the water:
"Children! Primitives!" they bark.
"You're doing it all wrong!"
They never fear to visit
Any indignity upon us, their hosts,
Yet they are so concerned
That all must be done correctly.
And all the power of the glass
Won't reveal what's inside their ships.
It must be so precious to hide it that way.
When the wind comes around,
It smells like death to us.
With their big noses,
How can they ignore the stench?


Dutch and Chinese traders were allowed into Japan, but only under strict rules. Rengaku, or "the Dutch effect," refers to the relatively fast way Japan was able to "catch up" with technology and even overcome the west after years of isolation. The theory is that some technology from the Dutch sort of leaked through and developed despite the obstacles. It's always funny to see the world as others see it, to paraphrase Burns. I don't know if there's a word for Rengaku in reverse, but there certainly ought to be.

I am a supporter of reparations, but I don't believe most programs of reparation are of sufficient scope and vision. It is not only American fortunes that were made on the trade of people as slaves, but European ones as well.

Image: Wiki Commons and it ain't sayin

Pull Back The Covers

Yellow

Light changes color, I knew that
Even before they brought me here
As a child. I was tea and now I’m petal
And at night I am gold. I dreamed
The moat was full of enormous boats
Bobbing like jugs and buckets. Giants
Charged out and tore off the gates,
Smashed in the doors, broke screens
Like firemen, pressing us flat
Between leaves of paper. I was trapped
Inside a book and I was yellow.

When I was little, I could never figure out why they used the words for skin color that they did.

Today's prompt was to use an adjective as your title. Today's judge is a real poetic heavyweight: Alberto Rios. You can read some of his work here. I'm so psyched to be in the company of these National Poetry Month judges. It's like when I run a long race and I see the elites passing me, and they're on their way back to the base when I'm just starting out, and they're like, "good race, good job." And they're serious, because I'm old and slow, but they're so nice about it.

Image: Yellow Book. You know Wilde was never published in it, isn't that strange.

Truly, It Is A Lonely Planet

A True Guidebook To The District

Most of you are here to impress
Each other, not me. We’re lazy as cats
When you’re not looking. At your step
Down the street, the scene springs to life.
The cheap ones are thieves and the honest ones
Cost more, so you’ll pay the same either way.
The bad ones hurt your body, and the good ones
Hurt your conscience, so you’ll hurt either way.
I have a whole book of secret ways
To make yourself cry, and each style of sadness
Is distinct, with a name and a poem to go with it.
It’s very beautiful, but I’m not allowed
To show it to you. For years, I’ve saved
My greatest sadness, and I haven’t had to spend it
Yet. Yes, it could be yours. This wine is worth
Every bit you pay for it. Don’t be fooled;
I am the one true guide to the district.


Missed a couple days, have things scribbled, was running around. Will make up for it later, threat or promise ;)

Today's poetry judge is spell crafter Annie Finch. The prompt was honesty/dishonesty.

Guidebooks to the Yoshiwara were often produced and highly popular, with names and portraits of popular women and tips on how to conduct yourself there so you wouldn't (ha) get ripped off or look like a bama (or in their words, yabo or hankatsu. Hankatsu means you got only enough tsu to get that tsu matters but you don't really have the full tsu. You're half-baked.). Anyway, I saw similar guidebooks of Paris prostitutes from turn of the last century at the Museum of Eroticism in Paris.

Image: Hishikawa Moronobu, 1678, from Love in the Yoshiwara, a little earlier that what I've been focusing on but you get the gist. Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

Four And A Half Stars In Your Eyes

Four Seasons At The Four Seasons

Spring
Blossom festival
Duties ended, princesses
Hit the hotel bar

Summer
Masked men dislodge a
Wasp's nest from the eaves outside
Room 237

Autumn
Orange skies. Sheet-wrapped
Lovers huddle on sidewalks.
Just a fire drill.

Winter
Irish, neat. A low
Table near the window wall.
Footprints in thin snow.

Today's prompt was a seasons poem; the judge is haiku master Michael Dylan Welch. (I'm going to start linking the judges for the Writer's Digest Poetry Month project, because they're fuqing saints to put up with us, and some tiny promotion is the least I can do.)

I have a soft spot for the Four Seasons. It looks nondescript, like the dullest office building, from the outside, but inside, it's all luxury and views of the park. I interviewed Rita Mae Brown there one spring. Last year, we went ice skating Christmas Day at the waterfront rink, and DD fell and cut her hand. The drugstore was closed, no convenience stores around, but the front desk at the Four Seasons hooked us up with a full first aid kit. I told them we weren't guests, but they said they were happy to help current and future guests. That's how you do it.

Image: "Executive Chef Douglas Anderson’s decadent French toast is made with smashed chocolate croissants served with Nutella, black cherry compote, whipped butter and maple syrup. The dish is offered during breakfast Monday - Friday 6:30-10:30 am and weekends 7:00-10:30 am for USD 17 exclusive of tax." I got too many food allergies to get into all that, but I'll watch.

The Answer Is: Good Intentions

How To Walk To Hell

The plum blossoms are fragrant,
And the pines are lofty
When did charcoal ashes turn to morning frost?
This is how you walk away from a difficult place;
Movement that is calm can also be swift.
I trusted the fickle world, I trusted people,
I turned without twisting, soft and supple, like a cat.
But a piece of gold is better than moxa for building strong legs:
All that was left was the final striking of hands.
The feeling is easy, like turning a key in a lock--
This is his own house,
But the threshold seems too high for him to cross.


This is a found poem built from instructions on how to walk “nanba aruki,” the walk/run of the express couriers and samurai, and from the kabuki love-suicide play by Chikamatsu Monzaemon, The Courier For Hell, (tr. Donald Keene) about a courier-service manager in Osaka who steals from a samurai to buy out his courtesan’s contract, and then runs off with his love to the mountains, where they get caught and die.

There was a brisk business in distance-running couriers at that time, with all the money being exchanged and the messages that had to get among the three big cities, Edo, Kyoto, and Osaka.

It took much longer to put together this found poem than it does to write one!

Image: Still from Dolls, film by Takeshi Kitano. It's based on Chikamatsu Monzaemon's works and opens with a bunraku performance of Courier.

Sweet Sixteen Tons

Prayer For Daruma

The mist from the fountain
Rises and settles
In soft beauty
Into the clouds
And returns to us
In the rain

The wisp of smoke
From my most expensive
Incense finds its way
Into the nostril
Of the horse

Like water and smoke
I work without ceasing
Even asleep
I am getting paid
And even as I sleep
All I earn vanishes
Before I see a cent
To pay for my bed, my food,
The smoke and water

Will I live to climb
To the temple and vow
To sit in silence
For my last days?
Observe, please
My serene unconcern
As I pour the wine
I have earned, and
As I am paid to pour.
In this moment, I am
A past master
Of non-attachment.


There was a fashion for Zen in Yoshiwara, but that's not why they called prostitutes "daruma." The founder of Zen was said in legend to have meditated until his arms and legs fell off. Daruma dolls, made for good luck, are modeled after this--they're sinply round faces and torsos. You can tumble them over, and they rock a bit and roll right back up again. A second visual pun is obvious above--the meditating master, seen from behind, looks like a phallus. It shows up in a lot of the art from around then. This image is from a hundred years later than the period I'm writing about; the artist is making a very old joke.

Image: Shaku Soen, late 1800s, Daruma Meditating.

"Fights And Fires Are The Flowers Of Edo"

Matoi

I'm every bit as bad as any fireman--
The bell sounds and I hoist my standard,
Soak my dress and fall to dash the flame,
Lie back and light my pipe again.

I fight dozens of them every night--
Tear down anything standing
Near anything burning, it all folds.
Daylight: flat, damp, a curl of steam.

Image: Yoshitoshi.

It's Not The Golden Journey, It's The Destination

Love Sick

I love the tile in my bath
So cool against my skin, such support
When I can't fall any farther

Maybe National Poetry Month makes me sick. All I know is it happens every time, and I still get my poems up here motherfuckers ha. And it's not supposed to be a haiku mmmmk?

Photo: It's the one everyone uses for their inspirational quote about kintsugi, and that's cause it's public domain. You gotta have an inspirational quote about kintsugi every year or they take away your new age license.

The Vanquishing Power Of The Two-Wolf Shirt

Nothing To Fear

Here is a song about creatures to fear
Though it may appear they mean no harm:
A tiger who howls in loneliness.
An ox that works through the night.
A pregnant rat.
A peacock dragging his tail in the dust.
A monkey vomiting wine.
A goat content to graze in the valleys.
A horse that shies and stops on the road.
A snake, still, on a sun-warm rock.
A dragon.

The prompt today was to write a things-not-as-they-appear poem. Given the theme I've chosen, almost anything would qualify.

Image: Wolf Hat by Utagawa Kunisada. I didn't know much about him, but Wikipedia says he was the most popular of his time. Lots of twisted stuff, really nice. This is from a kabuki play; most of his work was images from these.

High Time for a Haiku

Spring Greenery

You take my tears when
You leave for grief. It's envy--
You are free to go.


The scholarship has caught up with the euphemisms around the Floating World. Here's a great article with extensive interviews of the curator of an exhibition currently at San Francisco's Asian Art Museum. A few details: Most Yoshiwara prostitutes were sold into it as young as age 7, trained for several years, and were put to work by their teens. And they didn't last long; there's a mass grave from those times found outside the district, with the remains of more than 21,000 people "without connections," mostly women, mostly in their 20s.

If you'd like to learn more about human trafficking today, this group is a good source.

Image: From the Ukiyo-e Tarot, created by Koji Furuta. A really good deck, variation on the Waite so it's easy to learn, but carries its own meanings as well.

Time, Gentlemen

On the Clock

A clock must be constructed with wicked precision,
But the increments themselves can be sliced
As thick or thin as works within the measure
Of sun to sun. We behind the moat know
Time is our trade, but we incline to accommodate,
Make a few adjustments to the gears. It's only sensible
That the hour of the rabbit allow a greater span
For husbands to right their clothes, shove on
Their hats, and shuffle home again. It's right
That the hour of the snake should slip by
As smoothly as its namesake. If you hear me
Steal from the bed and ghost off barefoot,
It's not to take a rifle through your pockets.
I'm heading for the pillar clock in the hallway
To tilt a counterweight a bit, slacken the chain
On the machine. My hands know what to do
To make the bells go off, and send him scrambling
From my bed a little sooner, or buy some time
For us to breathe a little longer, disregard
What the light tells us and obey the engine.

Being isolated for a couple hundred years means you get to make your own time. The Utamaro prints on the "Hours of a Courtesan" are protected. This image of a Japanese Edo clock is from a site on karakuri, or automata, a very fine site indeed. The clockwork is the same in the puppet as the timepiece; it's just exposed in the latter. We've all got something inside us destined to run down.

Rumpspringin

Lattice

music, smoke, cats, piss:
these may take their liberties
flow the night streets
as they                   please
the rest of us are secreted

screen slats                    lattice
slats fan slats                    skin
a ritual glimpse                    the game
to keep you                    going
round every corner                    promise

rose, lily, lily, rose
item: six embroidered robes
layer, layer, layer                    flower

To be put behind a lattice was the mark of having achieved the middle-class of prostitution in the Yoshiwara. It's different from being put in an Amsterdam window display; the idea is that mystery is more valuable. Manufactured mystery. The more expensive you were, the more layers of robes you wore.

Photo: Took it a couple years ago and used it already, but it fit.

Float, Float On

A Foot In The Door

The first two visits, I don't even look at you.
You've put out for a hell of a spread,
But I don't fill your pipe, and I don't touch
My cup. The house feasts on my refusals.

For these few days, the power of
My denial keeps this world afloat.

The house has done its diligence.
The spies report: a small income,
A small house; men respect you;
Good connections on the black market.
Your sword is legendary,
My maids giggle, even with all I've seen.

On the third visit, I can drink,
I can smoke, I can listen to your songs.
Two old warriors, we can't keep our hearts
Still at the smell of a challenge. My hands
Plunge beneath your robe, and I can drown.


So if you wanted the best of the Yoshiwara, you had to put some effort in. You had to fill out an application and go to two interviews and pay for a lot of treats, musicians, the whole shebang. The woman you were after wasn't permitted to eat or drink, but would just sigh and look devastatingly disappointed, I imagine. Sometimes she'd even say no on the third visit. But sometimes she'd say yes, and you'd become a regular. You still had to keep up the love letters and poetry and treats and cash flowing, and sometimes you'd have to fight off other regulars. You couldn't rest on your, um, laurels.

This is the first post for National Poetry Month. Last year, my theme was the Albigensian Crusades. This year, it's the Floating World, the Yoshiwara district in Edo, post-1750. I'm using this theme and combining it with the prompts from the Pad 2015 Challenge at the Writer's Digest Poetic Asides Blog. You can visit there or the NaPoWriMo site to find out more and do it too. Or throw them some cash, never hurts.

Image: Ripped off from someone's Pinterest, a vintage 1970s subway poster of Agemaki, the courtesan from from the Kabuki Sukeroku. "Don't forget your umbrella."

Love Is Kind Of Spooky

I was going to try to send this to a magazine, but I'm too tired. Haven't slept in a couple days. Too many work. Wrote this between works.

Snow Day

It's an old-timer's joke. When it snows, they call:
"Liberal Leave--That means liberals get to leave!"
Nature's predictable unpredictabilities, a big freak snow
(deniers say there's no such thing) springs the drones,
Federal workers, and their contractors, and their sub-contractors,
And their sub-sub-contractors from our pens in the cube farm
Before that 5 o'clock whistle blows. Down the rolling

Hills of McLean we slide in holiday mode,
And into the bar that bygone days called Charley's Place.
Halfway into the first round and already the ends of our hair are touching.
It takes three to make a conspiracy: You're a drunk,
I'm a PR trinket; Eddie, just another glassed-up geek.
Where did you learn to make your voice sound like a man in a movie?
Is this the part where I stumble to the ladies room and everything goes black?

I don't know what brought you here, but I'll tell you what got me:
It was the smiley people on the PowerPoint, those scrawled emoticons,
There among the Getty-grab montage, the calculated ratio
Of racially ambiguous stock-photo faces and bare-faced
Helvetica, there it lay, that half-assed plan to swallow it all.
Most of them were all, yeah, OK, they saw it as a technical
Issue, more overtime, something to spin
For more gold. He saw it and turned cold.

You don't even have to be the type who's played these games
Since birth (it helps to have a dad who came home and drank and never
Came to your school or told you what he did all day in that suit) to know
A few simple hacks that can change your life! Ghost and encrypt,
Randomize, keep it all in draft form on a shared address,
A sort of cloud-based mutual masturbation; and, um, cui bono, what else?
Oh: Look for the glitch. Glitch first, then pattern recognition.
Your innocuousness is your greatest asset. Cultivate a single
Artisanally crafted eccentricity as a sort of vaccine. You want to be
Overlooked. Like the Potomac. People live here for years
And never notice those rocks. That current. It's lethal.

The roads are ice and our wheels are spinning, trying to play it out,
Another million, another fiscal year, another sub-sub-sub--
(It makes a sound like going down the drain. It makes a sound
Like in a basement. Like water. Concrete. A hole in the floor.)
Contract for the app that drives the device that drives the system that drives the
Payday. You come up gasping, like Jean Valjean out of the sewer
And into the snow, dented cars, salt-rimed and ice-stippled.
Slipped through their fingers again. It looks like Moscow out here.

See Me Feel Me

Crickets

I.
Silence has the edge.
My hearing started going but I don’t get
Monsters, like a real artist.
Of course I think of Goya when I think
Of going deaf, I can’t help it,
It’s a reflex, it’s how I was raised,
For comfort, I turn the pages
Of Los Caprichos, think thank god,
It’s not just me. They really do look like that,
The heads of asses, the gaping mouths
With no sound. It’s not just me.

II.
My hearing started going, and I don’t get silence.
Some get oceans, some get bells,
Some get the test of the Emergency Broadcast System.
I get crickets, I get distant sirens.
Where is the bug, where is the accident?
In the other room? A few blocks away?
Inside or outside? Here I am,
In a state of perpetual alarm.

III.
Oh and also Poe, the prince of auditory hallucinations.
Some hear things that never were, and think
Why not? They turn their shame into a heartbeat
And scream and give themselves away.
I bet you heard that alright! Here come the cops again.

III.
You could look at it this way, there must have been at least
One time in your life that you were alone
In a house, even just a room, just a bed, and you hear things
You’re not sure, was that a thing, and you think:
Someone’s in here. Someone’s coming after me.
Your mind turns the random creaks and pops
Into a pattern, and then into a person.
You just want the sounds to make sense.
But there’s no one there. There’s no one after you,
No one following you, no one spying on you,
Reading your texts, researching your movements,
Trying to find out your next move, building an altar to you,
Filming you, filming you everywhere, nobody.
You’re alone. It’s OK. You’re completely alone.

IV.
Silence, like any other weapon, depends
For its effectiveness on range, the skill
Of the one who wields it, and the quality
And care put into its manufacture.
I’d say you’ve got these covered.
You’re no toddler in the supermarket cart,
Taking mommy’s gun out of her purse to play
With and shooting the cashier. You’re trained.
You know what you’re doing. But I have to tell you--
(I shout into the night, at the treeline at the edge
Of the yard, because I can always say I’m drunk,
If the neighbors say it’s a problem, if they say
She needs to see somebody. Calling out,
Talking back to the ones who aren’t there,
Who have never talked to me,
That’s my weapon.) --I have to tell you,
I know you’re out there. I can’t hear you,
But I know you’re out there.

V.
Crickets are prized for their singing
Or for their fighting. The nobleman holds
An exquisite cricket vessel in his portrait. I feel him hearing
The papery crinkle of the cricket hopping,
The surprisingly rounded thud against
The walls of its molded gourd.
The cage is designed to amplify sound.

VI.
I get sirens. I wish I’d get the ocean.
I’d like to duck and plug my ears
And hear the resounding boom. Close my eyes
And breathe water. Oh salt, salt, clear me.
Some people pay a lot for this kind of treatment.
I want the ocean. It doesn’t drown out the crickets.
In their cunningly crafted gourds, they bob
Out on the tide and into the stream.

Photo: Ann-Margret gets sudsed.

Je Suis Curiouser

Nine of Swords

In Admiration of the Professional Mourners

I never remember when to kneel,
Or sit, or stand, (or speak or heel)
Or bow my head, so you assume
I'm new to mourning. Not true.
It's clear I'm not a pro, I haven't
Kept up with the latest techniques;
Neither meta nor rootsy, my grief
Is outsider grief, self-taught. To you
Goes that blessed relief of tribes,
Armies, nations who share your sorrow
And issue proclamations in its honor.
I am alone in mine.
I know a well-crafted fence when I see it;
I can admire a fine machine, and proper
Words and what to wear. But it's a
Rulebook I was never given to master;
I'll show up at the Home
With a tub of potato salad, not knowing
That's just not how it's done anymore.

But like an old woman who dances
On point in her dreams, my nights are filled
With ghosts, with so many dead you'll
Never, never know, so many you've never
Even seen or heard of, but I have, I know
Them all, and through the night I offer
Such exquisite tribute the dead themselves
Are brought to tears. It's simple, as it
Must be. It gets them every time.
Of course I'll tell you how. I give away
My art, I always give it away. Here's all
I have to say: "I realize that you are gone."