honestly, i wish i could sing, not only for karaoke (which always is a consideration), but so that i could sing songs like steve earle and mcgowan and tom watts do. goddamn. ballads and stories about real folks, truth that touches the heart.

*edit and aside* if any of yall know where i can find vietnamese folk, like old tyme vietnamese ballads, please send ‘em my way. ive heard some from my dad and some stuff that was on paris by night and such, but i need to hear more. in all seriousness, most vietnamese pop drives me nuts. too disco-ey… but i want to get in touch with those old ballady folksy roots that ive known very little.

i know i’ve been remiss with posting, my only excuse is that i was working on my thesis and finishing up college. congrats to me on graduating.

but along with that comes big big decisions about the trajectory of my life, my vision for the future and my development as a human being, a citizen and an artist.

so what else to do but take an odd-yssey ‘cross the continental united states? imma be hitchhiking, busing and generally trekking all o’er the place. i feel like there’s so much of this country that i haven’t seen and this will give me both an excuse and an opportunity to be a tourist all over the place. i’ll be able to perform at different joints and poetry venues wherever i can find ‘em, train at jiu jitsu places from coast to coast and even get a touch of culture and cuisine by eating local and visiting museums and honkytonks. more importantly than that, i’ll get to meet and get to know hella people from all walks of life, i’ll get to write, really allow myself to throw myself into art without the distractions of the city.

and most of all, i’ll get to maybe wrestle an alligator.

i’ll be blogging the trip the entire way, committing myself to at least one blog post a day, no matter how large or small. i’ll be leaving towards the end of june and taking a month to trek ‘cross the country to the apia spoken word and poetry summit, which yall should attend if you possibly can.

but as a part of that… if you have couch space or an idea of places to go or recommendations or advice or words of wisdom, please, please send ‘em my way. if you know someone who’d be willing to host or show me ’round their neck of the woods, please holler at ‘em for me. also, if you have any experience with couchsurfing.org, i’d love to hear from you.

and watch out for a viet am poet boy with a big backpack round where you live in the months of july and august.

i’ll be posting more in the next few days about the tirp and more writing, it feels damn nice to have time to write again.

but for now, more trip planning and xbox 360 .

life is a journey, no wonder so many folks are lost.

goddamn it has been a long month.

which is why i only got 8 days into the poetry project before giving up. too caught up in too many things to keep it going. my personal life is all a shambles, my school life is overburdened. and to top it off, i lost a month and a half of work on my thesis because the file got corrupted and is completely irrecoverable. luck loves me.

but imma keep my head down and bull through. i can’t wait till i finish, graduate and go apeshit. go back to the gym, get prepped for a competition at the end of the month. god i’m going to enjoy feeling tired from physical activity.

i’ve given up on the poem-a-day project for the simple fact that my everyday life has to take priority… and because i realize i really really hate posting poems that aren’t polished. such is life.

wish me luck.

i’m the type of poet who writes in great spurts. and i am currently hella blocked, so no new poems until i can get over it. because of this, here’s two old poems, slightly done up to presentable. appropriately enough since it’s a horrible, nasty, get into your bones wet and windy day, i’ve decided that they’ll be love poems. as happy as i ever write ‘em.

big smiles.

even when you want to cry.

oh… and if’n you’re interested, i should be there and it’s dope as heo… the apia summit. a great gathering of artists and just generally dope people. and dude, it’s in the bay area this year. how dope is that?

—————————————–

jokes

the imperfections of our bodies
give shattering testimony
to the perfection of the moment

shared knowledge
of sex
being too sacred
a meeting
to be had
without laughter.

touch is a ghost, is
a memory, is flame
and salty sweet moisture,
is the tracery
of sparks

touch whispers,
touch grips fluidly
and straddles
the fault lines
between
pain, pleasure
playfulness.

no self consciousness, not now
when we lose track
of limbs, the parts
yours that become mine
mine that become yours.

for an instant
entwined, no
me without you, identities
defined only in relation.

and then i rolled off.

———————————–

untitled

my fingers walk the outline
of your silhouette, trace the tightropes
holding our tenuous miscommunications,
trusting in our unspoken tensions to hold us up.

we sequester whispers in the corners
of half-hearted smiles

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.

i’m back in boston for break, and it’s… been an experience. especially as i’m also writing a midterm and my thesis. what fun. thank god for copious amounts of ca phe sua da. goddamn have i missed easily available, high quality vietnamese food. i’m gon’ get hella fat, but that’s what zhoo zhitzu is for. which reminds me, first day i’ve been back playing for months and months. yall should be proud. and i’m even writing again. bounties will never end.

i’m lying of course. they always do.

i’ve already talked about the issues i’ve been having and ain’t gon’ rehash it. so les leave that aside.

the night after i came back, East Meets Words, an asian am open mic series in boston had its fourth anniversary, which was trippy as hell, because i was there for the
first one. way back when, it feels like ages, because at least in my development as a person, it has been.

coming face to face with the changes within myself over the years, because i see it within the space and the people that have defined east meets words for me, was at once one of the most traumatic and one of the most hopeful experiences of my life.

it’s crazy to say but it’s a beautiful thing to see change, to see people growing and developing… especially as i am unfortunately one of those people who is not as good as i should be at the whole keeping up thing. too often, it really is out of sight out of mind for me, so seeing these people that i really do and truly love, with all the depth of emotion that i have, seeing how they’ve grown and how they’ve developed, even as i have, is…

there are no words for it. it’s heartbreaking because i wasn’t here to see the changes, i wasn’t here to see them at their weakest or there for their triumphs, i wasn’t
there to halve the misery or to double the joy. and on some level, it’s trippy seeing everyone developing their own separate lives, pairing off and becoming grown ass folks, while i’m still a kid more often than not.

but at the same time… what a fucking great night. even with my issues, what a goddamn great night. what a huge, happy, appreciative crowd. it’s events like this that made me a poet in the first place, that got me in love with performance, with crowds, with that affair between artist and audience that is at once symbiotic and parasitic… and which is too often likely to break your heart.

the beat collective rocked it. there’s no empty words for me to use to describe how bloody amazing they were, how much they saved me from myself.

now i wish i didn’t stop learning the violin all those years back.
———————————
can i just say… fuck needing a car.

i realize now that part of the reason that i love new york city is because there’s an inherent, unquestioned freedom in a city that never sleeps, where there’s always a bar or a club or adiner or a fucking bodega that is open. there are always people out there. no matter how alone you are, and nyc is the loneliest city in the world, there’s someone out there to drown your misery with or something to do to forget for that little moment. there’s space to run, run so that you know that you’re alive, run so that your demons can’t catch up with you, at least for a little while.

i don’t have a driver’s license, so whenever i come back to boston, i regret it ever the more. it might even make me get a driver’s license. which is probably not going to happen, both because of laziness, but also because i do have my principles.

but sometimes, i just wanta run off and wander, and it’s so difficult in this city. it’s annoying to say the least. i love having trains that allow me to get anywhere in the city whenever i need to get there. it makes life so much easier.

maybe there’s a woman out there, a boston girl with a car, a romantic’s heart and an eye for the beautiful. a girl who likes long drives, late at night, philosophical discussions over whiskey and black humour who can love a poet boy with a paunch from good food, good drink and merry making… who has his demons and his darkness, his bad times and his sardonic jokes and has a propensity for wandering, in all senses of the word.

epic lulz.

btw, can i just say… i miss my mohawk. and i’m not drunk on saint patrick’s day, i’m not sure whether to be proud of or ashamed of myself. but goddamn do i miss my hair. shaved heads are nice and all, but goddamn and i know this i’ve said it twice and i’ll say it again, goddamn i miss my hair. time will heal even that wound, won’t it?

also, i am soliciting descriptions for that banner on the top right of the page. if you want to contribute, ten words, + or – 2. i’m keeping the ones that i find to be clever and just insulting enough to fit my ‘unique’ sense of humour. if you can call it that.

life is one of those jokes you just don’t get until it’s way too late.

Which is one of the best things about coming home, the availability of food. As someone who lives by himself, one of New York’s many lonely, I just don’t have the same availability of food at home as I do when I’m in my parent’s house. It’s amazing to have 24 hour takeout, but sometimes, it’s just amazingly nice to have momma’s cooking right there, in the fridge, outside your bedroom door.

Yes. I will admit it, I am becoming gloriously fat. Food, how I love thee.

————————————————————

I figure I might as well ask all of you this because I seem to be asking everyone around me: what should my next haircut be?

I’ve done bald, crew, mohawk, fauxhawk, reversehawk, weird shit shaved into my head. I’m thinking of maybe doing a mullet or a horse mane, or even hipster hair and just let it grow out.

Suggest what you will, with these caveats…

no really long hair. i just can’t do it. it takes too long and in the process it just annoys me. i would end up shaving my head before i could get something like a ponytail or a top knot together.

no weird colors. i like my black hair.

no braids. my hair is hellllla soft. i don’t think it would braid, and even then… i don’t wanta have to grow out my hair as long as i would need to.

————————————————

congratulations to all my roninathletics brothers who’ve received their promotions. hellllla more color on the mats. all the promotions, overdue and well deserved.

i recently went back to boston for the holiday and when i was there, i got to train with my black belt, Dave Ginsberg. after my usual arsekicking, i was surprised with a promotion. i am now a one stripe blue belt. dope.

i am forever talking about jiu jitsu, i know. but i really do you think that all of you should try it at some point. the kinesthetic meditation allows for is just one of the many benefits that makes you understand why so many of us put so much time and effort into playing this sport.

it takes a long time to get your blue belt, your first belt in jiu jitsu. it takes a lot of grueling work just to slowly advance to the point where you have any idea of what you’re doing, much less to get your blue. i’ve played jiu jitsu for two years now, just about, and i can honestly say, without jiu jitsu, i wouldn’t be the person i am. i think i’m a stronger, smarter, calmer and healthier person because of this sport become passion.

now… if only i had more time to play. but such is the life of a student in nyc. but it makes you think, what is dope about jits that it makes, hella busy, want to spend all my freetime playing it.

——————————————-

Last minute edit,

I’m thinking of putting together a chapbook, both as merch and as a way of physically having a chronicle of my journey as a poet.

How many of you folks would buy it if i priced it at ten? at five?

how many poems do you want in it?

finally… are they any poems that you especially wanta see in the chapbook?

and for that i’m sorry. things have been hectic and i’ve been running around like a chicken-clown, juggling a hundred balls with me head chopped off. if that’s not one hell of a mixed metaphor i don’t know what is.

but i will do better. i have the ability in me to do better and so i shall.

but to make up for being slow with posting… i’ll post a completely draft poem, so that you can watch the editing process over time. aren’t you special? front seat to the creative process.

——————————
let’s walk the slope
of crashing line graphs

find each other
at the ends of loss projections

dance and swagger
on trading floors
awash with stolen dreams
the effluence of stymied greed
coked and caffeinated fear.

we’ll laugh
when others would cry

build bonfires
with stock receipts
and whiskey drenched bar stools

our rage, righteous
partially at our own impotence
fuel for our lovemaking.

we’ll bring new meaning
to the tears already wept.

————————————–

i have a few shows that i’m negotiating now, so i might be coming to a school near you soon. but if you’re connected to your school’s asian am clubs or spoken word clubs or any other organization, throw me an email, bring me out. it’ll be beautiful to come and see ya’ll, party it up and build together. building together should probably be ahead of partying shouldn’t it? then again, i /am/ a vietnamese boy from boston.

but for all of you that are reading, thanks for reading. yall are beautiful. i don’t deserve you. but damn will i ever try to deserve you.

————————————–

so i didn’t compete. had a school thing come up last second. which is awful considering i dropped the weight. but such is life.

i just wanted to shout out my team though, as we have multiple new blues, a new purple and have had a bloody bunch of visitors. my black belt, dave ginsberg, came out from boston, ran an amazing seminar at NYU. Christian Graugart from Denmark came through. I’ll be posting the videos of me getting me arse whooped so that you can enjoy. Ronin Athletics, my gym has been doing amazingly well in competition. if you’re in NYC and looking for a jits/mma school, you should definitely check us out. any questions, you can ask me or ask Christian Montes, our instructor, who’s hella open, hella inviting and a goddamn good teacher.

Ronin Athletics

Christian Graugart’s dope jits/mma blog

now… videos of me getting whooped and being demonstrated upon…

at the beginning.

vinh as a dummy

peace and love for now.

hit you up soon with more updates.

happy turkey day. eat well. drink merry.

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.

on a more serious note, as some of my friends will know, i’ve been going nutso recently, too much school and too much stress and not enough jits. i’m a worrier, what can i say? and i need jits to really allow me to open myself as a human being i believe.

but hard physical activity, physical activity that pushes you and really forces you to exert yourself in a fundamental way, that’s all crack to me. i went into yoga angry and upset and not in a good place. i came out feeling so much clearer and happier and so much less angry.

i feel like it’s ;fundamentally natural for us to be in touch with our bodies and that all the bs of everyday life puts us out of touch with that, so when we get a chance to get back in touch with our bodies and just allow ourselves to soak into the sensation, we’re getting back to something more full of teh troof.

anyone wanta go to free yoga with me?