From left to right
Winchester Nii Tete, Haruna Shimizu, Carl Freire, Teruyuki Kawabata, Yumi Miyagishima playing Kawabata’s “Jounetsu wo Torimodosou.”
Photos by Kabe Chushin 12
TOKYO FLOWER CHILDREN 8
Photos by Takashi Itoh/Whisper Not
Yuri Kageyama
Teruyuki Kawabata
Winchester Nii Tete
Haruna Shimizu
Keiji Kubo
Yumi Miyagishima
Carl Freire
in TOKYO FLOWER CHILDREN
at the Pink Cow, Shibuya, Tokyo
June 8, 2008.
TOKYO FLOWER CHILDREN 7
This kind of peace-loving Tokyo indies music scene is what inspired my latest short story “The Father and the Son,” which will be in an anthology of American multicultural fiction edited by the McCarthy “Genius” Award-winning poet and novelist Ishmael Reed and avant-garde dancer Carla Blank.
“Pow-wow: American Short Fiction from Then to Now” can be pre-ordered from Amazon.com, and I already ordered mine!
“Jounetsu wo Torimodosou” is written by Teruyuki Kawabata, the guy singing with his guitar in the video.
His beautiful fiancee Haruna Shimizu and I start it off with a reading and are joined by Winchester Nii Tete, Yumi Miyagishima, Keiji Kubo and Carl Freire _ who took part in the June 8,2008 TOKYO FLOWER CHILDREN event of multicultural poetry and music.
The other pieces that evening:
“SuperMom: A Poem for All Working Women With Children” with Winchester, a reading of “Ikiru,” “Little Yellow Slut,” “People Who Know Pain” with Shima, “Loving Younger Men” and other works.
(Earlier Tokyo Flower Children postings)
Remembering Soul
we leave without saying a word
people will understand
yesterday’s sunset burns in our memory
but tonight we remember soul
forever tucked in that pocket of our soul
we will forget the days of tears and fears
remember, remember,
in this pocket of our soul
we don’t need to cry
dalalalilah, dalalalilah, dalalalilah
just look at the sun and the sky
we don’t need to fit in
we don’t need to cry
we don’t need to cry
Jounetsu wo Torimodosou
The song lyric version (as opposed to the poetic version)
translated into English
which will be performed at TOKYO FLOWER CHILDREN at the Pink Cow SUN June 8, 2008:
Jounetsu wo Torimodosou/We Remember Soul
By Teruyuki Kawabata of CigaretteSheWas
Without a word, don’t look back,
We are moving on;
Yes, we know these are things
That they will understand.
Get it back in our hearts
Like a sunset in our soul
And tonight, get it back,
dalalalilah, dalalalilah, dalalalilah X4
Forever tucked in my heart,
In this pocket of my soul,
Those days of tears and days of fears,
We’ll let them go untold.
Yes, we know we were young,
We aimed for way too high,
All we did in return
Was make our loved ones cry.
Get it back, let’s get it back,
In this pocket of my soul
We no longer need to cry
Cuz those days are gone away.
dalalalilah, dalalalilah, dalalalilah X4
Take a look, the rain is gone,
We can see the sky,
There’s no need to fit in
Or try too hard to get by.
Get it back, let’s get it back
In this pocket of my soul
We no longer need to cry
Cuz those days are gone away.
We don’t need to cry cuz those days are gone away.
We don’t need to cry cuz those days are gone away.