LOVE SIMPLY a love poem by Yuri Kageyama
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
For Women Only _ A poem by Yuri Kageyama
For Women Only _ A Poem by Yuri Kageyama
perfume,
rubbing shoulders,
we rattle silently over the tracks
blouses, tucked bags, even powdered chins,
up too close to really see;
we sense only relief
we smell no greasy beards or sweaty suits or
beer breath of the morning after _
this morning commuter train
“josei senyo sha”
reserved
for women only,
introduced to protect the gentle sex
from those groping dark hands
preying prying fingers, stroking thigh,
poking panties,
pretending to be penises
right in public transport,
“josei senyo sha”
this is the kindness of Japanese society:
let chikan go unchecked,
forgiven for their mischief,
and give us, women, this special spot
farthest from the action
farthest from the ticket gates
the first car up front,
and the most dangerous
if we crash
No Tears
a poem by Yuri Kageyama
A collaboration by Sandile Ngidi and Yuri Kageyama June 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.
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.)
My Poetry in Life and Legends
My poetry is in great company here in LIFE AND LEGENDS Twelfth Edition
July 15, 2022, Irvine, CA, USA. Thanks to the Editor-in-Chief: Kalpna Singh-Chitnis.
Sergio Ferrer, an image and sound engineer, composer and singer in Singer, was inspired by my poem NOTHING HAPPENS to create this piece.
He says he “tries to mix and purify the digital essence of life from the technical brain side and also from the artist brain side,” which he truly does so well with this piece.
We have never met in real life, but this was a true meeting of souls.
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 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
AS IS MUCH IN LIFE
A poetic collaboration on Twitter by Dr. Minh and Yuri Kageyama April 22, 2022
Dr. Minh wrote the poem in five minutes after I tweeted the title. I just added the last two lines.
As is much in life
you sit alone on the edge of a river
I know
you nurture your solitude
but wonder
tomorrow
you will sit alone on the edge of the river
is your solitude still there
only you know
^___<
As is much in life
solitude is not emptiness
or vacuum or the void
where the real and the real annihilate
to give birth to something new
just emptiness
but this is where life begins
you and I know
as is much in life