This poem is part of an upcoming book “Continuously Poetry,” co-written with Japanese poet Osaki HANIYA, and put together by designer Shinsuke Matsumoto. I like this poem, and I like this book.
For the final one for the year, I contributed these paragraphs to the Dec. 31 AP Story (I’m repeating them here since they are unlikely to survive in full all the updates throughout the day):
Asia gets ready for the Year of the Snake
Much of Japan has shut down ahead of the nation’s biggest holiday, as temples and homes underwent a thorough cleaning, including swatting floor mats called “tatami” with big sticks. The upcoming Year of the Snake in the Asian zodiac is heralded as one of rebirth — alluding to the reptile’s shedding skin. Stores in Japan, which observes the zodiac cycle from Jan. 1, have been selling tiny figures of smiling snakes and other snake-themed products. Other places in Asia will start marking the Year of the Snake later, with the Lunar New Year.
I am one of the 12 journalists who won the Best of the AP award Sept. 14, 2024, the first year in my more than 30 years at the AP I win the award twice in a year. My AP Story and AP Photos that were part of the package:
Tokyo Correspondence: Notes From a Writer Beyond the Headlines
I kept a blog from 2007 before I started this site in 2011. Here’s the link below. I’m also sharing after this TEPCO CORRESPONDENCE: Notes From a Writer Beyond the Headlines. Those are my posts on Facebook in 2011, while I was covering the utility behind the Fukushima nuclear disaster. It’s amazing to run across bits of your past self _ and what you wrote then. Both so clearly you and not you at all. Yet totally the truth. And all that makes you you.
Having just returned from visiting the U.S., I was struck by how bathrooms (both toilets and bathing facilities) are really super nice in Japan _ clean, everything works, the hot water actually comes out in ample quantity, the tiles aren’t cracked, overall pleasant design/appearance if not just outright intelligent etc. _ and all this is available for those living in cheap housing, staying at affordable hotels/inns, and of course public spaces.
When you think about what Freud theorizes, the state of toilets speaks a lot about the thinking in a society, about its views on “equaltity,” what is treasured, and the innermost darkest obsessions. (maybe, anyway).
Here ICYMI is the AP Story I did when the Wim Wenders project was first announced and he talks about the film’s setting and the deep meaning of “restrooms”
My AP Story Sept. 4, 2023 about how the men who have come forward are hopeful, and fearful, ahead of the company’s first news conference on the scandal.
My AP Story Aug. 29, 2023 about a team looking into sexual assault allegations at Johnny’s and demanding Julie resign.
My AP Story and My AP Photos Aug. 4, 2023 about a U.N. group looking into the allegations at Johnny’s and how seven men saw that as a big step forward.
My AP Story March 3, 2022 on the verdict for Greg Kelly, cleared on all counts except for charges in one of the eight contested years. He gets to go home because his sentence was suspended. The defense is appealing, asserting complete innocence.
My AP Story March 10, 2022 on the U.S. government seeking the two Americans in prison in Carlos Ghosn’s escape be allowed to serve the rest of their time in the U.S.
A collaboration by Sandile Ngidi and Yuri KageyamaJune 2022 ~ (ongoing)
Sandile(June 12, 2022)
It is windy, rough, chimneys banging in the winds,
begging for mercy, pebbles.
Still meditating, but prayers return as cloudbursts. Blood.
Sky dances, but no raindrops on the lips.
Bare gullies.
Bedrocks rehearsing illness songs.
Orphans on dry geomorphology.
Yuri(June 19, 2022)
The blue-green planet is but a sneeze
Lost in two billion light years of solitude,
That speck of snot, or dot, of human life
In an eternal line of ancestral tradition:
Like Shuntaro Tanikawa and Mansai Nomura,
On this Juneteenth, we remember
Hope, courage, that patient wait.
Sandile(July 2, 2022)
On the first day of the month, the sun went home in splendid form.
A good ruse for me to sleep, and wake up in top form.
A world of theatrical summons suddenly made sensuous.
I am walking into the village where one season,
the magic of laughter died.
My dogs running.
Joyous.
Yuri(July 12, 2022)
The Music falls silent.
Piping, pellets, powder,
Wrapped in tape,
Two smoking blasts
from a homemade gun,
Assassination Assassination
Sinking and numb
We face each other and a new world
Sandile (July 8, 2022)
hope pulses with astonishing freshness.
i’m home
embracing every tiny patch
food in green pastures
songs making me feel whole
while mourning a dear brother
Mandla Dlamini,
his leaf refusing to wither …
Yuri(July 14, 2022)
… you are home:
The rice smells sweet,
Take your shoes off and let
The tatami cool your tired toes;
Take a deep breath;
Let it seep within _
That feeling that you count
When what’s going on around us
Is just the opposite.
Sandile (Aug. 18, 2022)
A man from boyhood rises on a point of order.
Tells a tiktok traffic DJ, his potatoes are wrapped in blood.
Pleads for wifey to go gentle into his black potato sack.
To keep it cool, moist.
This tiny poem is no portrait of a man as a naked cook.
It is his pain.
Sandile(Aug. 24, 2022)
In the punishing winds,
chimneys sing in the bloody winds.
Why can’t you see?
Sit down. Grow wings.
Simply sing along.
Grow dreadlocks. Brush your dog.
Chill out with bafo.
And Hugh. Cool laughers.
Sandile’s photo for the segment above shows “Madala Kunene (left), a superb South African guitarist and raconteur. The young chap is Hugh Mdlalose, a talented documentary photographer. His father was a musicologist and named him after the great trumpeter. Madala is popularly known as bafo. Zulu for brother.”
Yuri (Aug. 26, 2022)
it’s a blessed day
when you wake up and write
a poem,
or rather a poem wakes up
and gets you
to write a poem;
it just comes but it
has to be
a blessed day;
never forget when it happens last,
or those long silent days
when you just suffered.
^____<
(The poetic trans-planetary collaboration between Sandile Ngidi in South Africa and Yuri Kageyama in Japan has evolved over time. Their previous works are: #peacepoetry (March ~ May 2022), and the work that started it all in 2021: “Magic 50 of COVID-19 Poems.” The tradeoff of lines in a literary hand-holding defied geographic borders, in a shared vision, week by week, or almost week by week, through the pandemic, the war in Ukraine, the comings and going of daily life. “This poetic dance is our call and response. A tango of sorts,” Ngidi says. Without having ever met once in real life, the poets know simple but totally perfect mutual understanding. Thank God for Poetry.)
