KELOID _ a Poem by Yuri Kageyama

Artwork by Hokusai

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.

KELOID _ a poem by Yuri Kageyama

A famous actor once told me

He wished he didn’t have a Face.

Oiwa in Yotsuya Kaidan asks:

Is this my Face?

Criminals feel free to do evil

Their Faces behind a mask.

I still remember I cringed in horror:   

Her Face was covered with Keloid

But instead of being a vengeful ghost,

Or criminally insane,

She is just gently worried

Not blaming

Not frail

Not vain

RENSHI A poetic collaboration Part Two By Osaki Haniya and Yuri Kageyama

Our journey continues. Clich here for the first part of our journey. Below is where we pick up, from May through July 2024. The odd number installments are by Osaki Haniya and the even numbers are by yours truly. The theme is supposed to be “love,” although, as always, we go all over the place.

RENSHI

A poetic collaboration Part Two

By Osaki Haniya and Yuri Kageyama

連詩 第2弾

あなたと交わるのは

薄く大気が身動きする砂塵のあわい

雨と風と時が

廃墟の親和性を完成してくれる

そうだったね

徐々に思い出していくよ

倦んだ傷口と解剖メスの

刹那の痛み

白灰色の泥絵の具に

厚塗りの膠を重ねて

2

Native American Wisdom as Told by Urie Bronfenbrenner

A hip bone defect

Runs down family lines;

When they become warriors,

Some born

Can’t go riding

Can’t go hunting;

A brave white scientist

Maps out Blood

Lineage  

Crooks and crannies,

Buried in Genes;

No child will ever be born again

With a hobbled spine,

No such child will be born again

The brave white scientist is excited

“I have figured this all out,” he says;

“I know. I know.” 

But all the wise chief does

Is shake his head,

Deep pools of knowing  

Beneath the eagle feathers,

And he says these Words

That say it All: 

“We believe in Love.

We believe in Love.”

3

よく眠りなさいと言った母の声も届かない遠方に来て

無(なるもの)への郷愁など持ったこともなく

久しぶりに新古今和歌集を開いている

ーー草枕 旅寝の人は 心せよ

  有明の月も かたぶきにけり

辻を回ると養源院

異国の共犯者が作り上げた不在の輪郭に惹かれ

苦痛と憐れみと嫌悪感と

程よく煽られる感情の臭気と

あなたの所在を見失っても

迷うことはできないと知る退屈さと

4

(With introduction and music playing Al Green’s “Let’s Stay Together)  

I, I’m so in love with you

Whatever you want to do

Is alright with me

Cause you make me feel so brand new

And I want to spend my life with you

I bury the body, bloated and sagging,

Fat fingers that no longer hold

あなたの身振りに習うなら

臨床的良心によって射ち、つらぬき

微細な歪みを調合しなおし

名付け

印を彫り

忘却の漆喰から奪い取るでしょう

on Friday night, May 31th CE714

北海を渡ってタイン川へ向かう船室に り戻

紅茶が運ばれてくるまで眠った

すべては襖 の黄金のなか絵

あなたのノックで、やがて

夜の salutation が始まる

6

Romeo and Juliet in Kabuki

Where there was a Balcony is a River divide

Star-crossed lovers flee in the dark

Clinging to each other like souls driven mad

Chikamatsu writes of Double Suicide

Puppets more human in frenzied destiny

And Shakespeare simply asks:

Wherefore art thou?

7

偏愛する友人たち

娘たちが眠りに就くころ

荒れた穂先を尖らせる

風に解けだす辰砂

ペルシャ赤

スペイン赤

答えを求めているわけではないけれど

私は信仰を持たないままです

8

The homeless guy in my neighborhood who is always reading just got a new cute tiger puppet he keeps perched on his cart.

It looks like he washed it recently. It looks so perky.

Today, he had a new wand with a pink pony on it.

You found these?

I wasn’t sure what to expect. Some homeless people aren’t very friendly.

But this guy just looked bewildered. Then he said: You can have it.

It broke my heart.

No, that’s yours.

He has nothing.

And he was going to give me his new toy.

9

白象図

展開部はアレグロ・アッサイ

白色の下塗りが

微かに足音を響かせ

次第に高まり

^

火や花々

産声を上げるディ・モルトを け抜

それから不意に行く手を遮った

^

耳の砂

砂の匂い

夥しいマティエールの間で脚を開き

ゆっくりと押し付けてくるあなたの舌

^

聞き取れない声で呼ぶ

強暴な、母の名

^

風が吹く

引っ掛けるのだ

呼びとめ

伝えてほしいって

^

心配しなくていいんだよって

何かを欲しがったことなど

一度だってないんだよって

^

黒みがかった灰色の

黒ほとんど黄金色の

白象図

^

あなたは描き

ねじり

吊り下げる

^

此処から向きを える

変どちらかといえば少し歪んでいるあなたの肩

そこから遠く海が眺められる

^

なんという静けさだろう

幾つになったのとか

あのとき言っただろうことの意味を考えていた

^

何度もあなたは立ち止まる

そこだけ積もった冷気を吐き出しながら

*俵屋宗達『白象図』

10

Today inside Tokyo’s pristine acoustics

Of Meguro Persimmon Hall

A Japanese cellist played 

Ryuichi Sakamoto’s score for

Bernado Bertolucci’s “The Sheltering Sky,”

Love-torn and blistered by the Morocco sand,

An Africa covered with flies, indigenous yelps,

Fevers that derange:  

If Sakamoto was inspired by Debussy

And Debussy was inspired by Asian music,

Has it all come back

Full circle?

Gone

Around this vast complicated War-ravaged ready-to-crack World

To settle quietly

As that tiny ache

Inside our chest?

To be near hurts

To be far hurts, too

Love simply hurts

To live hurts

To die hurts

Love simply hurts

Watching you die

Hurts even more

Love simply hurts

To know you hurts

To have known you hurts

Love simply hurts

But to not know you

Not hurt for you

Is simply not a choice

Love simply hurts

Love simply hurts

Love simply hurts

HAIKU FOR BASHO a poem by Yuri Kageyama

Haiku for Basho a poem by Yuri Kageyama

May 3, 2022

眼差しを

無に流すかな

芭蕉のかわ

He is still watching,

Though washed away to nothing-

Ness, Basho’s River

SHADOW a poem by YURI KAGEYAMA

Photo by Tennessee Reed

SHADOW a poem written for the Poetry Challenge May 1, 2022

By Yuri Kageyama

when young,

one thinks of what

one will become

or what one

wants to be

^___<

as years pass,

we realize

what we are seen as

doesn’t really

matter

^___<

what matters

is who we really are

how we live

what it is that we do

day by day

^___<

which is not

the same thing

at all

that is what counts

in the end

THE AFTERLIFE A poem BY YURI KAGEYAMA

THE AFTERLIFE

A poem by Yuri Kageyama Feb. 23, 2022

The mass of meat

In a heap like a grave,

Cold, still

Amid wafting incense,

The moans and chants of mourning,

Eyes closed, hands clasped

Frozen in motion,

I lose interest:

Those motions of burial and propriety,

Those greetings, sympathy, tears;

He is no longer there,

Not in that body,  

Twitching twisting growling in incoherence,

More and more silent

Over the years,

He is no longer there:

At last,

He is gone

POWER OF THE PEN A poem by Yuri Kageyama

ことばは

よみあげなければ

音はない

おまじない

祈り

のろい

告白

観念

永遠のものがたり

ことばは

Toshinori Kondo _ a poem by Yuri Kageyama

Toshinori Kondo
A Poem
By Yuri Kageyama

shrieks growls wails moaning jagged cries that tell stories of the urban jungle wire and metal untamed animal half machine bleeding real blood never stops a never-ending pulse guerilla warfare of free music of onomatopoeia like a snake or a frog whose skin is always wet

My Poetry with Music at SFJAZZ CENTER in a tribute to ISHMAEL REED June 2014.

SFstage
Photo by Annette Borromeo Dorfman.

Poetry written and read by Yuri Kageyama with the Yuricane band, featuring Hirokazu Suyama on drums and tablas, Hiroshi Tokieda on bass, Hide Asada on guitar and Trupti Pandkar on vocals.
“A Tribute for Ishmael Reed”
SFJAZZ CENTER in San Francisco SAT June 28, 2014.
All poetry written and read by Yuri Kageyama http://yurikageyama.com
5:40 “Loving Younger Men”
11:05 “Little YELLOW Slut”
17:25 “No Gift of the Magi”
23:55 “Ode to the Stroller”
30:00 “Fukushima” in homage to Questlove Jenkins and The Roots.
34:00 “Hiroshima”
40:10 Indian Improv Interlude
44:02 “I Will Bleed” Lyrics by Yuri Kageyama and Trupti Pandkar, Melody by Trupti Pandkar and Hiroshi Tokieda.

withbass
Photo by Annette Borromeo Dorfman.

SFJAZZ with drums
Photo by Annette Borromeo Dorfman.

with trupti
Photo by Eba Chan.

ebaSF
Photo by Eba Chan.

LOVING YOUNGER MEN a poem by Yuri Kageyama with drums by Hirokazu Suyama

LOVING YOUNGER MEN
A Poem by YURI KAGEYAMA
With Drumming by HIROKAZU SUYAMA
Film by ADAM LEWIS

A reading at the Japan Writers Conference in Okinawa, Japan, Nov. 2, 2013.
“Loving Younger Men” was first published in BEYOND RICE, A BROADSIDE SERIES, Mango Publications and NOLO Press, 1979.

Only the bodies of young men aroused her;
the pure innocence in their wide dark eyes,
the wild still animal strength in their muscles,
the smoothness of their skin, so shiny, stretched
out over their boy-like shoulders, flat stomachs,
abdominals rippling gently, their thick thighs
that could thrust forever into the night, their
soft moist lips, where their tonges, so delicious,
dwelt, which darted against, into her vagina,
making her moan with joy, forgetting everything,
which felt so strong against her own tongue at one
moment, yet another, seemed to melt like caramel
in the back of her throat,
their dry fingers, that touched her in the most
unexpected and expecting spots,
their penises, half-covered by their black curls,
seemed smaller, less developed, less threatening,
yet as their shoulders strangely widened
when they held her, their penises filled her,
pointed against her deepest uterine insides,
hurting her with a pleasurable pain, as though
she could sense with her hand, their movements
from outside her belly. Her father beat her as a girl.
She ran from him, crying, please don’t hit me! please
don’t hit me! No, rather she stood defiant, silent,
silent tears drunk down her chest, till he, in anger
or fear,
slapped her again and again, once so hard she was
swung across the room, once on her left ear so
that she could not hear for three weeks. She
frequented bars, searching for young men who desired
her. She sat alone drinking. She preferred
the pretty effeminate types _ perfectly featured,
a Michelangelo creation, island faces with coral eyes,
faces of unknown tribal child-princes. To escape
her family, she eloped at sixteen, with an alchoholic.
who tortured her every night, binding her with ropes,
sticking his penis into her mouth until she choked,
hitting her face into bruises, kicking her in
the stomach, aborting her child, his child.
The young boys’ heads, she would hold, after orgasm,
rocking them in her arms. She would kiss the side of their
tanned necks, breathe in the ocean scent of their hair,
lick their ear lobes and inside their ears. When they
fell asleep, sprawled like a puppy upon her sheets,
their mouths open, she would lie awake watching,
watching, watching, admiring their bodies, how so
aesthetically formed, balanced, textured. What
she enjoyed the most was their fondling her breasts,
suckling, massaging the flesh, flicking the tongue
against the nipple, biting, sucking till her nipples
were red-hot for days. She could come just by this,
without penetration.
When she is alone, she cries. In the dark, she reaches
upwards, into the air, grabbing nothing.

No Gift of the Magi _ a poem by Yuri Kageyama

No Gift of the Magi
A Poem by Yuri Kageyama

we were poor
not dirt poor but poor
me a reporter at the local rag
you a stay-at-home dad and part-time English teacher
and so when i opened that velveteen box
you handed me oh so casually on
Christmas eve
palpitating
anticipation about a
gem or jewel or sparkle
that other girls get
and saw a plain black fountain
pen
the kind no one uses anymore
mont blanc or some other brand requiring finger-smudging
ink,
i was angry
“why did you buy this and
waste money?”
and then you
suddenly
moved
and i thought you were going to hit me
and you took the pen
and broke it in half
hot with something
that was beyond
the anger i felt
sour-tasting disappointment
a feeling of not being
loved
not like that O. Henry story
where the comb unwanted, the watch band unwanted
were simple
priceless proofs of
true love
undeniable,
not that dumb purchase filled with
hate,
and you looked up
and said what I didn’t
think of and what you didn’t
want to say
at all,
“I bought you a pen
because you are
a writer
and that’s what writers use
_ a pen.”