dude, weschler’s currywurst is fucking bomb. because my plans had fallen through last night… yes i got ditched… i hit up my local watering establishments for some late night alcohol and food.

how was i ’sposed to know i would find my new favorite watering hole? massive, amazing german beers poured by a hella efficient, friendly staff. currywurst, which i will officially say is one of my favorite foods ever. a wild boar sausage that was literally to die for.

alcohol and pork. how the hell do you go wrong with that?

but yes, i just needed to make a quick shoutout to the place before i got into the poem of the day. i hella recommend that folks should roll through there whenever they’re in the east village. and hey, since i live near there, you should hit me up, if’n i’m not already inside.

oh yeah, i won my slam last night. made a pretty penny. i’ll be back next month, alcohol money is worth slamming for.

but let me say again, this posting schedule is kicking my ass. i never realized how difficult it’d be to turn out a poem a day. jeebus. but yes, onto the poem’s intro. this piece comes from the fact that i really do have goddamn weird dreams, that are, to me anyways, completely believable while i’m in them. so i really will wake up thinking i was the bodyguard to the president and ate a bullet for him, or that i dived into a computer and rode on top of the fail whale.

awkward i know.

april 4th.
dream fail

i dreamt one time
the earth was invaded
by polkadotted unicorn space pirates
and the key to saving the world
was saving the stripper

one night, i thought i was superman
the asian dude who failed in math
and gave up the violin discovering
his gift for rescuing fair maidens
and cats stuck up in trees

the time you hadta carry me home,
drunk, i saw us as intergalactic ballerinas
our pirouettes encompassing
star systems, our soubresauts
like sun flares

when i passed out
at that party, i saw myself
as leonidas at the springs
holding off a legion
of fratboys with nothing but a braut

i woke up this morning
after having dreamt
we were still in love

turned to see you
next to me in bed, the assurance
in some deep part of myself
that all was right with the world

and realized how much
i hated dreaming

it’s weird what you remember at odd times. as i was writing the original draft of this piece for yday, i was thinking about what my father told me… that back home, there was no meat anywhere to be found, relatively little of any other veggies, because he grew up in the hill land in the middle of vietnam. like hill peoples in other parts of the world, his region was poor as hell, the lack of fecundity causing the folks out there to depend on daikon to feed they families. like the irish with potatoes, they found a hundred hundred different ways to prepare daikon, it was fundamental to their cooking, to their way of life.

along with this, came the memory of my asking him how the hell the vietnamese managed to shrug off the yoke of french rule way back when. my father told me vietnamese are goddamn good in a fight, ’cause we’ve been fighting since light dawned on people, since lac long quan and au co went their separate ways. conflict is what we’re good at. we’re stubborn, we’re tough and we’re broke, so we can always make do. he went on to explain that this is also the reason why we can’t rule ourselves for shite… and why when you get a lot of vietnamese people in a room, give them alcohol, there will inevitably be at least four-five fights by the end of the night.

oh my people.

btw, fuck vivid dreaming. i had one of the most bittersweet dreams last night. woke up with a broken heart. shit was awful. i want normal people dreams.

i will be slamming tonight, 6 o clock at the bowery poetry club. you should roll through if you have time, i’d love to see your faces.

also, my team, Ronin Athletics, will be completing at Naga today, so wish ‘em best of luck.

april 3rd

daikons, donnybrooks, processed meat

dolan’s eyes widened
in incredulity
as i folded three weeks worth
of now-clean laundry, crammed it
into just one sports bag,
my smirk replied, if you think this is good
you ain’t ever seen asians on a road trip.

i remember my father and mother insisting
that because we were an american family
we’d eat meat with our meals, that their children
would have what they didn’t,
so the taste of spam, canned tuna and eel
eggs and devil ham
wreath my childhood like the aroma
of my mother’s heavy hand with the garlic

my father’s family back generations
could not coax anything but daikons
from the stubborn, war-weary womb
of their hills, so they made a hundred, hundred recipes
for daikon, depended on it
like the irish on potatoes, because hill folk
can always survive

i was too lazy to go to ikea
to buy bookshelves
so i made my own

… in a gas station bathroom
my friend david made good use of the wall street journal
after too much wack-ass chinese food

the vietnamese used rifles scavenged
begged and borrowed
to rise against the french, had no uniforms
‘cept what they could scrounge,
no armour but faith in the cause
with such they beat a power

david’s uncle hates his life
but will not abandon his family, his job
as a line cook in a pho restaurant
so every night, he drinks a bottle of cheap cognac
till now his face is splotched red
with cirrhosis, his sweat reeks with fermented sweetness
but he has never missed a day of work, his children
have food every night, clothes on their backs

they call ‘em field expedients
yah make do with what yah got
my life is full of ‘em

but you do what yah gotta with what yah got
it’s in my blood.

will be slamming at the bowery poetry club for their college slam tomorrow afternoon at 6. would LOVE to see you.

April 1st

ain’t want to be no hero, buy no farm

sisyphean remembrances
are penance for our momentary hubris,
the pyrrhic nature of our commitment

i took showers three, four times
a day to scour
the smell from my skin, the grit
that inevitably infiltrated
its way past coverings, wedged
itself where the straps pressed, the water
like balm on parched tongue
in a mouth dry from desert and ‘drenaline..

trying to draw comfort
from rumination, like humility
from a superpower, i draw
from the infertile grounds
upon which we lie
false foundations
falling away, the center no longer holding.

there will be debate
about blame, when it was no longer enough
and motivation, when esprit de corps
became the only tenable connections
drawing us firm.

duty, both weight and impetus
for boys with set eyes
and stubborn backs.

funerals for heroes, and the cowardice
of not wanting to be one.

april 2nd

small favors and tragedies

ball missing the net by a breadth’s breath
in a grand street pick up game
among immigrants who share
no language, no customs
nothing but their foreignness
and the comfort of pirouettes and epees,
the unspoken eloquence
of the game.

having no papers
for the first jay in months
after the worst day in years
… the evening before
a surprise drug test

losing the number
of the pretty girl
destined to break his heart

snapping your ankle, all the months
of recovery… just before
you stepped
onto a mine rigged
to take out your platoon

the train doors closing abruptly
in the hopeful eyed boy’s face, his mouth
twisted in a moue at his tardiness
as he fingers the ringbox
stuffed as deeply as he could
into the bottoms of his pocket
even as the woman who he is to see
goes over the words over and over again
till their sharpness wears down,

“i don’t love you anymore.”

first and foremost, i want all yall to welcome one of my best friends in the world and one of the best goddamn artists i know to the vinhhua.com staff… give a hand to geoff ’sheeptang’ kim. geoff has a new york city hipster sensibility with the heart of a yay area hippie. he has an artistic style and flava that is like almost no one else’s, at once dismorphic and magnetic, transformative and transgressive. in addition to formidable visual talents, he has a unique way of looking at the world that is more often than not just a slight bit slanted. he’s seen the west coast, he lives on the best coast, has tripped from midtown skyscrapers and downtown dormitories, brooklyn dumps and every place in between. he’s a hella valuable edition to the team, and i’m hella grateful to have him on board.

‘but i don’t want to take your heart, and i don’t want a piece of history, no i don’t want to read your thoughts… anymore’ – the heinrich maneuver

kismet. fate. destiny. serendipity. all names for the same phenomenon, that sense that things are the way they are, that events and people come into confluence, not out of some random luck of the cards, but because it was ordained to be such.

hell, we had an entire movie about it recently. if you didn’t get that slumdog millionaire was about a fated love, then you weren’t paying attention… or only paying attention when freida pinto was on screen.

as a poet, it would be easier for me to just say that i believed in it, use it as a piece in my writing and act hella mysterious about the entire thing, but that’s too simple, too reductive. it takes freedom and agency out of the question, because if everything really is fated and pre-scripted, we have no real choice, we are on train tracks. it furthermore takes responsibility out of the equation, because hey, it was meant to be. so if i cheat on this girl, then it wasn’t meant to be, we weren’t meant to be together. if she says she loves another man, and comes back to me later, the pain that i went through, the alcoholism, all of it meant nothing, because in the end, it was ’sposed to happen that way.

we all know this shit ain’t true. or if it is, it shouldn’t be.

but at the same time though, i’m not lying when i say i’ve felt the occasional nudge in some direction, that moment when everything feels so perfectly right and you just KNOW this is how it is because it should be so. the smile on a lover’s face that makes you feel like this is what was meant to be. the crazy chain of coincidences that created the chance for smiles to touch in midwinter. times when, in desperation for some sense of meaning, you trace back time and realize it could not have but happened this way.

i’m not as quick to dismiss these moments as some people are, because i figure, something that i feel this strongly about has to have some validity in it right? yes… i know it’s a logical fallacy.

but love’s one hell of a logical foul up if you really think about it. and if you haven’t had that feeling of serendipity in your life, that moment where the strands of your life and another’s meets in such a way as to feel inestimably primally right, then i feel sorry for you. because no matter the heartbreak that it brings, no matter the drama it summons, it’s worth it.

then again, i’ve always been the peculiar sort.

——————————————————

so it’s a snow day, beautifully so. especially because i am sick as heo. i feel it in my nose and my throat and all over, just the weakness of it all.

it’s wack. but hopefully the extra day of rest, away from my long day, will fix me up. at least somewhat, i hope.

it did give me some time to think though… which is always good. actually, probably not in my case, but hey… i’m writing this section after watching tonight’s episode of chuck, which definitely plays into two themes i’ve already been thinking about previous to all this…

‘everybody talks’ and we all fall in love with the most inconvenient people at the most inconvenient time.

‘everybody talks’ is the idea that everyone has their limit, has that point within themselves that says they can’t take it anymore. it’s kind of a scary though, and something i’m not completely able to talk to about right now, because i realize how important it’s been in my life. and not even in the typical emo way that is easiest to interpretation. but hey.

the second one is much more obvious in its meaning, but it’s something i’ve been thinking about hardcore. both because of my ass getting broken up with on valentine’s day. as well as the general run of my relationships with women in general, everything from the girlfriends, to the flings, to the mistakes i’ve made along the way. it’s always the most inconvenient thing to happen to everybody involved… which kind brings this full circle, because it sure as shit makes me believe in fate or kismet. expect to see this theme in a lot of my poetry from now on.

oh and i forgot to say, the chapbook is being worked on hardcore… expect to see it soon.

and even though i spent most of the day asleep, i still managed to get some measure of work done. which is why i have a poem for yall…

ouroboros

a wise man, buddhist without
the belly, robes dyed red
with revolution, told me that he’d lived
a hundred thousand lives before this one,
and you always die
only to return

i gave a bum my last
three quarters today, kissed
my friend on his grimy cheek, he was a little
freaked, manhood threatened
by the obviousness of affection, and ate
three hot dogs on my stoop
to chase away the cold.

i have so many random stories
to give away, like shiny bits
of change.

like how i gave the homeless wino
laid out in front
of the ritzy real estate brokers
what was left of my jameson
to warm him through the night

the girl who stole my heart
and sold it back to me
for the price of a dance
and my harlequin’s mask, our toes
bent and twirling through the twilight

the grandmother who collected
empty bottles and soda cans
rhinestones strewn on the street
and cigarettes, as offerings for the dead
soon to be her companions

moppy headed
and spiked topped boys their
bruised fist metaphysics
who choked back tears
and gave me my name

the fortune teller, or maybe
the doctor, the dreamer
who told me death was but waking
and my body’s premonitions
were but the stirring

to end, life’s a loveable mess and hateable order.

btw, this is going to be a long asssssed post, covering a wide arrange of topics. so be forewarned. to a large extent, i’m blogging so profusely because it’s helping me to explore myself in a way that i haven’t been able to for awhile. i have been writing poetry, but in a lot of ways, i haven’t been able to say much new. i haven’t been progressing as much or as quickly as i want to be. i’m hoping that by blogging, i can push open the artistic barriers within myself.

“i’ve written pages upon pages, trying to rid you from my bones”

it’s weird to see someone you once loved, deeply and powerfully, but no longer do now, for whatever reason. especially when there was also negative emotions enough to match the positive ones. which is not to say that love is inherently positive.

i saw my ex today for the first time in awhile. or i should say, for more than second, more than a flash and a glimpse. i gave her a grin or a half-hearted smile, i’m not sure which.

there’s so much emotional weight, so much baggage to even an image of a person who had that type of place in your life. it’s hard to reconcile it with the realities that we deal with in the everyday, when, some part of us remembers that link between people.

soldiers who have lost limbs say that they sometimes feel those missing pieces of themselves, as phantom sensation or the pain of something that isn’t there but should be. i guess seeing someone you once cared about touches that old wound, reminds you of a bond that was once there. and on some level, no matter how “ever tortured” you are, some part of you can’t help but want that back.

these moments are life’s kicks in the balls. the awkwardness, the shock. the oh shit factor of it all. the freezing up and the wondering what the hell to do. and then the pain afterwards, the inevitable ache of a missing limb.

no wonder i’m epic fail at relationships.

but hey, like they said in dedication, no woman loves the truly fucked up guys. so i guess it’s time to make an effort to fix myself. or to find myself a shy illustrator somewhere who is just as damaged as i am. someone who needs to be needed.

which actually brings me to the first of my love poems to an asian women. yes, i know that’s not grammatically correct. it was done on purpose. i’m artsy like that. or a moron, either way.

—————————————————————————————
#1

insomnia
her constant companion
now, in the days after

when she has reconciled
or she tells herself over
and over, again

her body
remembers too well
the missing comfort
of squeezing into sparse space
between arms splayed

being needed.

she slept earlier, then
as if holding together
tenuous miscommunications
enough to tire the heart out
the effort at trust

she wishes him well, she prays
in half sleep, everything
he needed, she didn’t have
her feelings, she examines, paws over
touch till they lose their cutting sharpness
the angles worn, memories fade
dulls the ache, cools
the phantom warmth
lingering

stiffness of dried tears, regrets
maybe even the resentment
like fleeting city air
through the the gap of her window
begging to be filled.

now she waits, till
the sun creeps its fingers
to her windowsill
before she will climb
the few feet, insurmountable
to her bed.
———————————————————

“your pain was my pleasure, your sorrow my joy, i’m afraid i’ve lost you now to pain and good cheer”

one of the most interesting things i’ve gotten out working on this series is the fact that my socialization has made it so that i look at the same emotions much differently than some of the women that have written in to me. it’s actually kind of dope to examine these feelings in a different light.

consider an emotion as a many sided object, a rubix cube of sorts. i’ve only seen one side of it, seeing it from another side brings out a completely revolutionary experience. it’s full of epic win.

BUT i need more, many many more. SO PLEASE SUBMIT MORE EXPERIENCES TO ME.

more poems in the series are forthcoming, i promise.

“i’m more than a handful you’ll see, so kiss me, i’m shitfaced

so. the nyu protests were all over the news and all across the blogosphere.

i was actually there. me being me, i was at the bar before hand, but wanted to come out there, like many folks, to see the drama. and maybe get some free quesadillas.

let’s face it, i’ve done a lot of stupid things in my life for the sake of free entertainment. dating women, going to events posted on the internet, antagonizing people, going to nightclubs. a lot of random experiences and events that have become a large piece of who and what i am. so why not right?

but as luck would have it, i actually ended up hooking up with a crew of street medics and spent my night watching their backs, making sure they had space to work and no one fucked with ‘em. not protester, not counter protester, not bystander.

it would figure that when there were three distinct sides and a shitload of bystanders, i’d have to take up a fourth side, one likely to get my ass into a fight, with no back up in sight. after having left a bar no less.

but all in all, it was a great experience, the street medics were great folks.

on to a discussion of the larger implications of the take back nyu action though. let’s face it, it was a failure. there were hella mistakes made. many blogs have already discussed the various problems with the whole thing.

what i just wanted to briefly talk about was the dopeness of the democratic spirit in action. not just in the protesters themselves, who i thought were a little crazy even if goodhearted, but the counter protesters and the folks just screaming out random shit. democracy is not just about the idiots agreeing with you, it’s about screaming at the idiots who disagree with you as well. it’s the discussion that grows out of diametrically opposed theses. it’s the creation of discursive space. and let’s face it, clashing signs saying things like, “we support tbnyu” and “you suck” and “we want quesadillas” are, to me anyways, a sign of democracy in action.

the ability for those three sides to exist in one space is probably the only positive thing i see coming from the entire fiasco. i actually managed to see people who didn’t agree with each other having semi-rational and fair minded conversations about their politics. that’s dope as hell.

of course, there were hella scuffles. but fuck that shit. the voices battling each other, singing freedom songs against oppositional chants, smells like democracy to me.

i do wish there was a little more entertainment and it wasn’t so fucking cold. but hey. ain’t nothing perfect, i should know that better than most.

“can’t make it alone, i built my dreams around you”

i think i’ll be posting nyc moments from now on, just the things i see day to day that warms my heart and reminds me that i live in the greatest city in the world. new yorkisms. moments that are quintessentially urban, and contribute to the mystique that new york has and always had in my mind. will always have most likely.

today, i saw a father playing football with his son on the sidewalk. all i could think of was that it was such a new york minute, to be playing on the side walk, as people walked by. there’s not that much space, so waddya expect?

i love reading new york’s missed connections on craigslist. there’s so much loneliness, yet hope there, that i become addicted to it. the image of a shot in the dark, a chance at love, the ultimate message in a bottle appeals to the hopeless, broken hearted romantic in me.

the sheer variety in them, everything from hipsters and indie scenesters narcissistic enough to realize that folks who are just like them have a bloody good chance of browsing missed connections, because hey they do it too. forreal forreal, the sheer amount of stuff that comes from the L makes me laugh hella hard. i’m really tempted to do ride the L one of these days, dressed hipstered out, smile tentatively at some girl on the train, write furiously in my tiny notebook and get off at the next stop. i figure that’d earn me a missed connection. yes, i just stole that from xkcd. but hey.

old people making a last ditch effort, the last arrow before their quivers are depleted.

folks cussing folks out anonymously. full of teh lulz.

all sorts on missed connections, and every one of them entertaining. so addicting. now i miss get back to it, in the forlorn hope that i’ll get my own. come on, how many mohawked asian boys are there in this city?

actually that kind of reminds me. i have this crazy thing about love and crushes. let’s face it, i’m obsessed with the concept of love, probably more so than most men. i’m not very good at it, i epic fail at relationships. i’m too much of a fuckup, and i admit it.

sooner or later, i’ll get my shit together on it. but for now, i enjoy it.

i like having crushes. they’re fun. even if they usually lead to nowhere. and even when they do, i usually end up getting bored and restless. i guess the unattainable is so much more fun than the real. i like having this image in my head of an attractive woman in my head, attractive for whatever reason and having the hope that she might be the one. whatever that means.

but it’s all so conceptual. i guess that’s the way it is with me and love and relationships. i’m good at thinking about it, dealing with it on a flirtatious level, but i epic fail at maintaining it. im better at writing about it then actually going through with it. i always say i want a relationship, i want what i see that other people have. those folks who are pretty much married make me jealous. but if i can’t get my shit together on the fact, is it fair for me to pursue something like that? especially for the girl?

i guess that’s love and relationships in the city.

or maybe i’m just immature.

“i’m lucky to have been what i have been, lucky to be coming home again”

more than that, i wanta tell all of you that the chapbook is back on. in lock step with the children’s book i’m working on. i am inundated with work of all sorts these days, but i NEED to get this ish done for the sake of my sanity. especially since i haven’t gotten a chance to go to jits nearly as much i want to. it’s full of epic fail.

my webguy, i36, will be revamping my page a little bit, updating it to make it more efficient, easier to use and spoofier. i’m eventually hoping to get a gallery together where i can post pictures that i take with yall. you’ll notice that the blog is the first page you see when you get to vinh-hua.com, which is the first of the changes.

i will also be bringing more people onto the blog team. while this is my personal website, considering how much i ruminate and touch on all sorts of artistic and philosophical topics, i figured it’d be appropriate for me to bring more people in. and i think the cross pollination of ideas would be good for all of our creativities.

i’ll be announcing acquisitions to the team soon. if you’re interested in joining the team, hit me up.

life is a woman, you should be able to love her with or without her makeup.

big things come in small packages?

moving on, saturday, i had the privilege and the pleasure of performing at Umass VSA’s culture show: Spring of Heritage (btw, dopest juxtaposition evar). let me just say, it always does my soul good to see hella vietnamese people who are connected to their culture and proud. that critical mass is sometimes hard to achieve, and always energizing to see. living in new york, sometimes i get disconnected from this larger conception of vietnamese america. it’s understandable, as there is such a tiny population of vietnamese americans in the City, but that just makes the times when i get surrounded by my folks feel even that much more special.

rolling up to Umass was a trek, as are bus rides in general. but i managed to sleep through a lot of it, and i’ve come to appreciate the changing face of scenery i get when i move up and down the nation’s roadways. but immediately upon arrival in the town, i got picked up by one of my old high school classmates, TRISTAN in his bomb bmw. he’s the president of the VSA, and my point person for the whole trip up. i gotta shout him out and give him hella love for going out of his way to be hospitable, even with no sleep and with the hecticness of running the larger show. which leads me into telling yall that the Umass Amherst student run hotel is fiyah. hella surprisingly so, considering it looks like a waffel iron from the outside, but is hella gorgeous on the inside. guess who made my reservations there?

me being me, after i dropped my stuff, i decided to “rest” by going drinking with some friends.

old friends NEATH and LINDA (who i secretly have a crush on… or do i?), met me up, took me to their home and showed me a wonderful drunken time with new friends like the hella subtle clever and beautiful LU and the impeccably dressed korean balla MYUNG HYUNG. oh whiskey, how you make me feel at home.

fortified, i got a ride back from the ever generous NEATH and LINDA to the hotel, and tossed myself into my usual insomnia and nightmare punctuated sleep. it was great seeing these folks, because like many of yall, they are good friends that i never get to see enough, so i cherish my time with them… what i can remember of it. i usually don’t mention friends i meet up with, for a host of different reasons, but i figured they deserved it, considering i see them once a year. and since NEATH has started me on my path of WoW addiction. and of course they drove me back to the bus station for my ride back, which is always nice.

at the run up to the show, i met hellllllllla people, who must forgive me for not remembering their names. it’s been awhile since i’ve done a culture show this big. special props goes out to the really dope sound crew, whose names i’m hoping i’m going to get right… KATHARINE, CHRIS x2, STEVE, AYUMI and a few others who i’m too much of an alky to remember. they were a hella professional crew who made your friendly neighborhood poet boy sound and look so much better than he could have otherwise. so many thanks and much love to them, and to tech crews everywhere. hanging out with the tech boys and the stage hands, ANDRE and TONY (i think) was one of the highlights of chilling at the fine arts center before the show.

one of the trippiest experiences i’ve had was meeting the two Miss Vietnam International pageant queens, Ms Donna Vo and Ms Jennifer Le, both of whom managed to combine beauty and presence in such a way as to draw every eye in the room when they entered (male and female). they were the first beauty queens i’d ever met, so it was one of those trippy cool experiences i know imma tell my kids about.

the show itself was dope, coming together in spectacular fashion. there was a pretty big turnout, in a really crazy big cement and steel auditorium that made me feel like a gladiator in roman times. really though, part of my ritual is walking the venue, to focus and to kind of take it in… ish took me forever son.

but yes, hella folks on the playbill, but i’m going to do my damndest to mention all of those i got to see before i dipped out to prepare myself. it’s the least i can do after all.

the mcs were TRISTAN and JENNIFER LE, who both looked resplendent in their traditional ao dai. which reminds me that i have never worn an ao dai in my life. which maybe should be a priority someday. they opened up with the national anthems of the united states and vietnam, as well as lighting the incense to the ancestors. the girl who sang the us national anthem, had one helllluva voice on her.

the lion dancers from Hong Tinh were dope, had a bunch of really interesting tricks and really got ummm, right into the audience. by the way, i wish i had the camera to see that one guy in the crowd slapping one of the lions in the ass. one of the most epic moments ever.

i actually bounced at this point to head back stage… but, i had caught a bunch of the acts before when they were running their sets in dress rehearsal, so let me just give the acts i missed a few words. judy le sang Bonjour Vietnam, which i’d never heard before but will be listening to after this blogpost.

the girls of the modern dance crew rocked the stage and got the crowd moving to a really interesting mastermix.

the new year’s skit was hilarious, and hella real. my vietnamese is kinda wack, but i actually understood what was going on, which was nice. and in all honesty, the skit was hilarious, especially in that it touched on experiences that vietnamese ams and asian ams have all experienced and understand. it was a wink and a grin at our parents and our miscommunications that warmed the heart and brought a smile to the face.

i only managed to catch part of the fan dance and the traditional fashion show in rehearsal and didn’t get to see it, but considering the roar of approval from the crowd, they went over hella well.

i must give props to UCONN’s modern cinderella skit, as it was extraordinarily well put together. they had all of cues perfectly timed, so much so that they were actually lip synching to a tape in the background and still managing to pull it all off perfectly. i managed to catch their set twice, once in rehearsal and live from the stage, and i hafta give them their due. between costume changes, lighting and music changes, the crew managed to pull off a really intricate dance, and do it with verve. as someone who’s done theatre before, i know how hard that can be, so much respect. even more than that, i gotta give love for them graciously sharing space with me… they had the nicest green room and allowed me to take a nap in there. i hope i get to see those folks again sometime and kick it for real. get at me folks.

TRISTAN was on before me, and managed to serenade the crowd with a love song, even after being sick and running around making sure the show was together. much respect to him for being able to juggle all that he did and still sing on top of it all.

when i got on stage, i was struck by how welcoming the audience was. it was a sizable number of people, but they definitely engaged with my work, and made me feel really welcome and loved. the beautiful Ms DONNA VO helped me out with milking poetry, before i went into the rest of my set. she was a great sport, and made me look hella good, so great love. i always like to think of sets as conversations with my audiences, which is why i banter a lot, try to gather opinions and do the pieces i do. the fact that the audience gave me so much of themselves and were so into it reaffirmed to me why i love my job so much.

give me your phone number?

i unfortunately didn’t catch the rest of the show, until the modern fashion show. which i gotta highlight because of the intricacy and delicate elegance of the paper dresses that were modeled. i go to school with hella fashion majors, so i know how difficult design actually is, and considering the really beautiful creations i saw were made from one of the most ornery materials ever, i have to tip my hat to the folks who put that together. absolutely amazing.

after the show was the usual after show hijinks. much love all around to all the people i met, including ‘dre, jenny, kevin, chau, tony, tiffany, linda, the other vinh, and too many others for showing me hella love. beer and chicken forever. oh and of course, facebook for the pics.

special gratitude to LUAN and ANNA for taking me into their home and feeding me one of the bombest breakfasts i’ve ever had. hospitality like yours renews my faith in the goodness of people. hit me up if you’re ever in the City.

as i left umass amherst, the snow started piling down, making it even more of a winter wonderland. i’ll always ‘preciate the great memories i now have from umass amherst.

thanks yall, everyone who i met, who showed love, ’specially TRISTAN and the VSA crew and the dope sound crew.

great love. facebook me. big cheeks are ’sposed to be good luck right?

tune in next time to hear my ramble about the NYU occupation. oh and…

life is a series of (un)fortunate accidents and misplaced pencils, that somehow form a pattern. god has a sense of humour.

and with that opener, let me be cheesy and say that the soundtrack to this blogpost will be Jason Mraz’s We Sing, We Dance, We Steal. it is valentine’s day after all, if i’m ever allowed to be saccharine it should be today.

but to get back to our regular programming, let me reiterate.

i fucking hate valentine’s day.

it’s not just the rampant, disgusting commercialization. or the fact that you have to have a special day to be romantic with whoever your s.o. is. or even because it marginalizes single people even more than usual (thankfully i gots me a date, suckers).

more than that, there’s an emotional weight to the whole concept of valentine’s day that offends the romantic in me.

let’s face it boys and girls, i’m a romantic of almost-korean-drama proportions. out of my top three movies evar, two of them are stories of boy meets girl, boy and girl fall for each other, boy fucks it up by being a loveable fuck up, boys make up for being a fuck up, profit!

dedication which i am forever quoting from and have seen WAY too many times, is a love story of truly human beauty, even if it follows the above formula because you can see how affection can grow, even within the most misanthropic heart, even from the greatest difference.

there’s the rub of it, i’m a fan of that ‘authentic’ romance, whatever it may be. i feel like valentine’s day puts such an emotional burden on people in relationships to try to artificially create this emotional connection that may not be there, or may not be right at that particular time. the beauty that comes from the meeting of two beings should be organic, should arise from the whimsy and wiles of the spirit and the heart, not be driven by the weight of some holiday. and considering st. valentine WAS a saint, the fact that hella folks use vday to get laid has a vicious irony all its own.

btw, one of my friends is breaking up with his long term girlfriend today. which is epically fucked up. and funny. hey, at least he didn’t do it on her birthday.

to all the folks in relationships, don’t let valentines ruin yo’ shit. sometime’s the bond can’t carry that pressure yet, cuz like all things in life, it grows, it gets stronger.

to all my single folks rebelling against it all, yall are dope. and more likely than not considering the fact that i have absolutely no idea of what i am going to do on my date tonight, i’ll probably see you at the bar.

to all those folks who are celebrating SinglesAwarenessDay and going to hook up randomly tonight… more power to you, may you find someone who’s GGG, may you find the chance and may you wake up on the morrow std free.

tune in next time for a treatise from me about communicating through damage.

to end…

life is making love even when the world is trying to fuck you.

and as a final middle finger to the artificial, diabetes inducing sweetness of vday… a love poem in the style of bukowski.

—————————————–

the most imitated poet in america

i may cheat on you

i will certainly drink too much
swear too loudly, smoke like i don’t deserve you
and you will taste cigarettes on my skin

des autres petite mort

i will treat you badly,
myself, worse
forget your birthday
call you only when it is convenient

my laughter will cut you
the jokes always at our expense
an embarrassment to your parents, mine
friends, yours. my hangers-on
already used
to the antics

they know me.

you will curse, throw dishes
and maybe pull a knife
you will question my genealogy
my manhood, more than likely my sanity

i will talk you down
and we will fuck, our anger
narcotic, ecstasy
addictive
or
we will walk out, names
like curses, tear-sealed oaths
vows of celibacy, as if

you will call me a fuckup
i will heartily agree, buy you a drink
for finally noticing

but you will believe me
when i tell you

i love you, maybe more even
than the bottle

and for that, you will forgive me
my many penny sins

this blogpost will not get all full of ruminations. instead i’m going to post a poem i wrote a long, long time ago, and have been editing recently.

but firstly, since for whatever reason, hella people find my site after googling how to say love in vietnamese, i would just like to say… it’s anh yeu em. simple, neh?

oh, and this is hella random, but i found a facebook group that has a bunch of people named hua in it. which trips me the hell out, because outside of my family, i’ve never met anyone with that name… it’s actually more common than i thought. whoa. it kinda gives me a warm sense of community and continuity, that other people share my surname. weird, but true.

onto the poem.

———————————————————–
a chinese restaurant

my homegirl katie tells me
‘people are fucking stupid.’

She comes to this conclusion
after working for more than a year at Mr. Wang’s China Grill.
And yes, before you ask, it’s really called that.
And yes, Mr. Wang is a dick.

I guess once someone’s spent any amount of time
working at a chinese restaurant, they grow a sense of cynicism
about the meaning of it all.

It’s been more than a year, more than long enough
for her to get sick of wiping windows, long nights
and longer days, shit ass crab wontons
a boss who doesn’t stop hitting on her,
old white people who assume she doesn’t speak English
just because she’ vietnamese, their grandsons
who try to kick game
with the two words they learned in mandarin, bratty kids
and even brattier parents.

‘And ni hao to you too’
‘No sir, we do not have spaghetti. This is a chinese restaurant.’
‘No ma’am, we can’t move your table because you don’t like the feng shui.’
‘Yes sir, general gao’s chicken is really authentic chinese food’
‘No, I will not go on a date with you.’
‘Yes sir, no sir’

The litany continues till she can see herself,
young woman who doesn’t know who she is yet,
going out back to the boxes she packaged earlier in the day,
grabbing her stuff, walking out.

She imagines saying, as a parting remark to her boss
‘Your food is shit, your customers are asssholes,
I’d rather date your eighty year old father.
Turn the light on, just because it’s low
doesn’t mean we can’t tell you’re ugly.’

But she’d never say something like that,
she’s too nice, kind hearted enough
to feel guilty about uncharitable thoughts

but wishes she could stop

stop smiling like she likes this shit, as if a dollar above the minimum
were worth the way her legs ache
and the feel of her hands, that her mother once told her
were her grandfather’s
a calligrapher back in the homeland

wishes she had the courage to say she hates working here,
hates doubting herself, hates the down economy
high gas prices and college loans

but she’s a fighter, struggled to bitch about it now

So, no wonder she says it,
‘People are fucking stupid.’

i tell her she’s right
i’m not stupid enough to argue with a vietnamese woman
when she has access to kitchen knives.

It’s six hundred miles of distance and two years since I’ve seen her last.
i tell her i love her,
that she’s more beautiful than she’d ever know
her hair windblown, her eyes stretched in a smile
the girl who’s too busy to find love

She laughs, thinking i’m faker than this restaurant’s ‘classic chinese cooking’,
and i grin like i always do, ‘cause ain’t no one have to believe it
for it to be true.

Maybe people really are stupid.

————————————

oh and i just wanted to plug some events for my boston and new york folks.

this friday in boston, boston progress arts collective will be throwing its monthly open mic series, east meets words at 9pm in cambridge at east meets west bookstore. dope name isn’t it? guess who thought of it?

sunday the 15th, sulu series will be doing our monthly series at the bowery poetry club at 9. the crazy and creative and wonderful kristina wong will be performing, as well as my hella dope talented homegirl cynthia lin.

much love. and let me leave you with this.

life is moments of heart pounding consciousness amid a klonopin haze.

View all New York City events at Eventful

whoa, two blog posts from vinh back to back. something must be up. vinh must finally be getting his shit together… or maybe vinh has finally realized that blogging is a great way to procrastinate.

i guess i gotta say something about the superbowl, it’s mandatory considering what day it is. so let me simply say that it was a damned enjoyable game to watch… even with the refs halfway determining the game at points.

now with that out of the way… i figure i’m going to share with you exactly the music that i was listening to when i wrote the post, i’m going to be doing this from now on. so if you can, turn your browsers to vienna teng’s myspace. her crooning will hopefully put you in some semblance of the same emotional space that i’m in. it’ll be one of our little communions. don’t tell your significant other.

i wanta wax poetic on nakedness for a minute. yes, i subtly reminded you i’m a poet, i’m dope. but seriously.

we all build personas and barriers to protect ourselves from the world. great big heaping walls that prevent us from making connections, these preconceptions like durian shells to protect the soft inner core and the seed of human beauty that is in each of us. and by beauty to say, that sometimes viciously sublime and trascendentally ugly piece of ourselves that makes us truly human, as more than an animal, that connects us to the greater, for better or for worse.

we do it because we’re afraid, for a shitload of reasons, be it that we believe it to be ugly or not worth it, or because it’s tender from having burned before or whatever it maybe. i think the reasons are too multifaceted, too myriad to be listed in a boy’s blog.

i do it too, hella. i swagger. i have my hipster pretensions.

but i think that what allows us to keep moving the concept of humanity along, what allows us to connect with both others and ourselves is the effort to make ourselves naked.

but vinh, you say, it’s just a matter of taking your clothes off right? or maybe gently stripping off those we’re trying to connect with, peeling them like onions. don’t you know how to unlatch a bra?

it’s never that simple. human beings never are. if we do become reduced to such simplicity, we’ve become sheeple. or enlightened. one or the other.

i think, i hope, i pray, that i’m moving down that path to connecting with yall by ruminating so much, through my writing, through my performance. but hell, it may be one of my pretensions. i think i’ll make an effort to post more poems here, not polished finished pieces, but snippets and bits, those things from my day or from whatever i’ve read or whatever.

let me strip down for you.

…

are you blind yet? dude, i’m not that ugly, am i?

————————————————————————-

so i’ve started working earnestly on the introspective musicology. thanks for the great response. i should be putting ish out there sooner than later.

but along the lines of my recent ruminations and my exploration of identity in general, i have another project, for which i have no catchy title yet.

it will come to me, i promise.

but as always, i need your help. especially if you’re an asian american woman. if you are, i ask that you send me, completely anonymously if you want, a few experiences that make you quintessentially you, no matter how you define it. i want formative memories and your thoughts on them, those life changing events that have become such a fundamental part of your character that, without them, you would not be who you presently are.

i know this can be a touchy subject, so if you want, please email me anonymously. or with your name, however you feel.

be as detailed or as vague as you feel that you need to be, but realize that i need to have some idea of what you’re talking about.

email experiences to vinh [at] vinh-hua [dot] com

the idea for this project came out of a discussion about what makes human beings who and what they are, whether certain experiences really do shape our lifepaths, and how big of an effect these actually have.

since i’ve been writing lots of two types of poems, either love poems or introspective ones, i figured it was time for a change, to explore identity once again outside of myself. that’s what the introspective musicology does. i intend for this project to do it another way, and hopefully with a more particular subject, it’ll be more enlightening. furthermore, “love poem to a vietnamese woman’ is still one of my favorite of my pieces, and it was an exploration of the identity of vietnamese women. i think it’ll be a challenge to do a series of poems that explore a larger subject, a ‘love poem to asian women (as an ideal)’ in effect.

and yo son, maybe i will finally understand asian women.

… probably not, but you knew i hadta make that joke for form’s sake if nothing else.
————————————————–

random, but i made soup for the first time today. not stew, not curry, but actual soup, with noodles. i threw together a bunch of ingredients and it came out tasting pretty damned good.

to give this context, i’ve always been afraid of making soup, because it’s so easy to make it either uneatable or pretty much nothing but hot water. you gotta remember, i live in a single room occupancy with no kitchen, so i got me some ghetto tools.

but through hella swagger, it worked out. maybe this is a metaphor for life?

or i could just be reaching.

which reminds me, i need to buy a digital camera, anyone got an idea what i should be buying?

and lastly, sad to say, but the chapbook will be on hold for the next bit as i try to face my writing again, reflect on it and see how much it wass affected by the bad time i was having this fall. but i intend to continue working with geoff kim, maybe even working on a picture book, which is an idea i’ve had in my head for awhile now.

oh, and i think i’m going to start a band.

*edit* I am thinking about writing some vietnamese poems and songs, but since my grasp of the language is not nearly good enough, i was hoping someone could help me with grammar and vocab and spelling ad just the general vagaries of writing in a language with which i have the ability of a four year old.

peace and love till next we meet.

with Singles Awareness Day coming up (when is Valentine’s day anyway?), the fact that i’ve been writing entirely too many love poems recently (ask to see them, they’re awful, but worth a laugh or two), and the fact that i’ve seen a few of my friends in healthy relationships wherein both partners care for and love each other, I decided I would write a ruminating post about love and romance and all those cheesy things.

boys like me love the concept of love.

but… maybe it’s because ideation and actualization are so fundamentally different, or because we’re afraid, or because any of myriad possibilities, we rarely get our shit together when it comes to love itself. and by we to say, those loveable fuckups who might be able to hook up, might be able to be with someone for a few months, may even have crazy torrid love affairs and fall in love with all the force of volcanic eruptions, but never have a relationship that lasts more than a month. am i a loveable fuckup? is there even such a thing? i guess that’s the worthwhile subject for another blog entry, or for your own input as readers, but i’ve been described as such, and rather like the appellation. btw, this isn’t to say i don’t like my lifestyle, i rather do. there is a an indescribable joy in falling love as if you were jumping off the empire state. but hey, we all get old. maybe i’m ready to settle down. stop laughing, it’s not that funny.

let me elucidate what i mean. who hasn’t heard the hip hop head who wants that ideal girl who deserves wifey status. how many shitty love poems have i written to some unattainable figure that is as out of proportion as barbie, even if not nearly as vacuous. yet, we never end up in something committed… and if it lasts longer than a few weeks, it’s inevitably unhealthy. personally, subconsciously, i realize i tend to drive away women who i believe to be stable, skirting the edges of relationships and preferencing the women who i know i will create stories with. dramatic women who respond to the sense of theatre in my own being, fire personalities who clash with my own in light shows that seem destined to rival the sun itself in intensity. and i’ve seen that happen with many of my friends, that they slowly but surely drive away those women that care about them enough to put up with their shit, in the pursuit of some dramatic fun that always ends up with them horribly drunk and emo in ktown at fucking four o clock in the morning and yelling at their friend who came to pick them up.

i guess on some level, it has to be because we idealize the wrong people growing up. it’s difficult to believe in the reality of deep abiding love when jay only recently hooked up with B and Naz did the nasty with pretty much everyone till only recently finding his woman. let’s not even talk about the bukowskis and ginsbergs of the world. and let’s face it, the cool kids growing up did not have steady relationships. jeebus, how often have we heard that assholes are the ones who get the girls one more time. i fricking HATE that saying (btw, the movie sex drive is retardo. do not watch unless you want to burn your eyes out. cheesy, morally reprehensible and NOT funny.)

maybe more than that is that so many boys like me have been burned. i’ve talked to a coupla guys about why they can’t get their shit together, can’t be in a steady healthy relationship and hella dudes recount something about either the one who got away or the one who burned them so bad it’s like third degree emotional scars.

but i guess there is still beauty in the fact that we so love the concept of love. that at the end of the day, we hold romance, not the valentine’s day kind, but the romance that says that there is something better, that the ideal is possible. and the fundamental hope that maybe, we can get our shit together or find the right girl or whatever it is and be that ideal, as long as this remains alive, i guess we’re still human, not merely sheeple or on haterade, and that is in and of itself beautiful.

what is even stranger is that most of the guys i’ve talked to about this CAN develop strong commitments to women… just never as a significant other. hell, to a certain degree, i’ve seen and experienced a certain dependence, a need for the nurturing and care and slap in the back of the head that the strong women in our lives provide. they put up with our idiocy, listen to us bitch, and occasionally drag us up from the barroom floor. these are the women that we love with such an abiding, incandescent love that even blood sibling-hood could not compare. i guess on some level, you can say i’m trying to rationalize away the misogynistic element of what i’m discussing. or maybe not. maybe i want to enshrine them and hold them in juxtaposition. or maybe i’m rambling.

bless the loveable fuckup. and to all those women whose hearts we break along the way, our sincerest apologies. except to the crazy ones who try to stab us for sleeping with their friend, which we really did not do, those women can go to hell. but really, without the ladies who care about us enough to usher us through the bad times, we’d have wandered even farther from the path than we have, and the bars would have even steadier customers.

thank you.

(did I just ramble on for like two pages? yes, yes I did.)

————————————————————-

can i just say, fucking A bj… why couldn’t you train harder? past that, i am never EVER speaking of this fight again. please do not mention it to me.

oh and DHK got robbed. the judges are either blind or stupid or both. i personally lean towards both.

machida is a demi-god and karate is cool again.

oh and lesson learned, never promise to take care of significantly larger and more belligerent drunk friends late at night. makes for an absolute shit evening.

furthermore, training for the first time in like 2 months is bloody awful. I got swept by like a dude who’s been playing for three months. epic fail.

———————————————————–

finally, I will be performing at Umass Amherst on Saturday, February 21, 2009. It’d be dope to see yall there. much love.

the new hotness at umass

btw, is it just me or is there hella teh lulz in the fact that i’m wearing aviators and a tshirt next to beautiful ladies dolled up in ao dai? i feel rather underdressed, but hey i’m an artist, we’re ’sposed to be able to get away with that shit.