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.

when i hit the zone, i’m so calm. i’m so grounded in the placement of my limbs and in how my body moves and how my opponent’s body moves that the world reduces. i need that. my mood is determined by it. jiu jitsu is religion and crack all rolled into one.

———————————————

one of my favorite reasons for living in new york city is actually giving me the fucking scares. everywhere i go, wlaking down the street, the shit i overhear is always hilarious and poignant and somewhat interesting. snatches of conversation are always great places to start poems.

but recently, i hear so many snatches about the shitty economy and about things tanking and about sacrafices needing to be made. it’s horribly depressing. everyone in the city is so worried, rightfully so. a huge chunk of the city’s economy and finances are based on the financial sector, and the financial sector has the largest multiplier effect in the city. with the FIRE industries tanking, the city on some level tanks.

but even as this gives me the willies, i am heartened. because this is new york city, and there’s something amazing about the fact that everyone is so willing and ready to deal. to face reality and to understand that when the fecal matter hits the rotary impeller, things need to be done. if any place in the world is ready, and no place really is, new york is ready for the worst. because new york is the greatest city in the world. its people are well informed, well educated and tuned in. its people love it. i love it.

take that paris. london. tokyo. shanghai. beijing. dubai.