
I still like this Story I did for The Associated Press some time ago when I interviewed a former kamikaze pilot. It was still online at The Detroit News.
#peacepoetry A collaborative poem by Sandile Ngidi and Yuri Kageyama March 2022 ~ May 2022
Sandile
We are crushed still, bulldozed, uneasy.
Give bread, paska, borscht now.
Sink the molten nerves, war hormones.
Pray fair winds, pebbles, sumac delights.
Rachel Corrie flowers, Westbank’s red ruins.
Yuri
Phan Thi Kim Phuc’s back,
Silent chants, red smoke, orphans cry.
Blue and yellow flurry on Tokyo streets,
“We stand with Ukraine.”
Fissions of fear, hypersonic glide.
Kent State My Lai Mariupol
Akiko Yosano tells us: Mountains will move,
Shuddering dark loins, tangled hair to lips.
Sandile
Stoop, Russians, stoop,
War dogs eat death you planted in the fields.
Spit its blood like wastewater.
Smear the gunpowder to sanctify your sword.
But no gun can kill the hills’ brooding smiles,
Butterflies will survive the heavy rains.
Yuri
When “tactical” dwarfs Hiroshima, Nagasaki,
“Neo-Nazi” is not a name for anyone,
Retreat sends an attack more frenzied than ever.
Poets speak above the silence,
Purify the Meaninglessness
Of words gone Mad.
Sandile
This ominous cloud
Racial hate in sniper fire.
Your fresh light
Brave in stunning pearls.
Still stubborn as our knees.
Your tenacious love,
Shireen Abu Aqleh.
Vibrant in the storms of black powder rains.
Black stones.
Red shrines.
Coral noctilucence.
Yuri
Children in Ukraine and Fukushima
Are sick with thyroid cancer,
More than the usual two in a million.
She cries remembering that day a decade ago,
When doctors tell her you’ll die at 23 without surgery,
“I was wearing a new dress and new sandals.”
ASYLUM
A poem by Yuri Kageyama Feb. 26, 2022
She barely remembers the rape
Monsters grow only in drugless sleep
She is well taken care of
—
Air raid on Tokyo
Baghdad
Dresden
Ukraine
— —
She no longer draws but
Cuts papers of color
Into ferns and flowers
— — —
Hunger in Biafra
A scream in Vietnam
Van Gogh’s ear
The Apology
_ A poem by Yuri Kageyama
My voice screaming banzai
Ten thousand years banzai
Dying in glee as the divine devil wind
For the crane god whose voice I heard too late
My hand piercing your baby
A glob of meat with my bayonet
Raping girls in the name of comfort
Burning a city like a Sherman deranged
My heart that worships history
To win status as an honorary white
Bleeding streaks from a fluttering red sun
Despising those of the same yellow skin
My voice
My hand
My heart
My voice will never speak that way again
My hand will never act that way again
My heart will never feel that way again
No apology is enough but I promise
And I apologize
KAMIKAZE
A poem by Yuri Kageyama
with
Yuuichiro Ishii on Guitar
Okaasan
Boku wa ashita shutsugeki shimasu.
I take off on my mission tomorrow.
I am so sorry I have not been a good son, leaving you so soon.
It’s such a peaceful evening _ so quiet I can almost hear the fireflies glowing.
I don’t know why, but I am filled with happiness, well, maybe not happiness, since I must say goodbye.
But this feeling fills my heart, all the way to the top of my pilot helmet, like a stretching sky without a single cloud.
I will fly my Zero, and fly and fly.
Into that perfect rainbow circle of hope.
photo by Eba Chan
HIROSHIMA
A poem by Yuri Kageyama
A reading by Yuri Kageyama
With Kaoru Watanabe of Kodo on fue flute, taiko drum and other percussion.
Recorded at Kaoru Watanabe Taiko Studio in Brooklyn New York
For a memorial for poet, publisher and educator Virgina Scott at Lehman College, the Bronx, New York
September 20, 2014.
they wander like a whisper
still
over this city
blending with the sea breeze
the soft light
the cracks of scars
not just one ghost or two
but tens of thousands
who all looked up and saw a flash
turning people into dead globs of charcoal;
there are no photos from that day,
they wander, crawling, naked, moaning,
flesh hanging like tatters;
they’re asking that question,
we did nothing wrong
why oh why
when all it can do is
kill kill kill kill
nothing else
turning skin eyeballs laughter head back legs
into a keloid of hell,
but no one really answers.
Rock legend Morgan Fisher (Mott the Hoople, Dead Kennedys, Queen) plays with the Yuricane band on my poem “Hiroshima” at a benefit for Fukushima children at Infinity Books SUN April 20, 2014. Hirokazu Suyama on tablas, Hiroshi Tokieda on bass and Yuuichiro Ishii on guitar. This was the first time Morgan Fisher ever played with us, and we hope there will be many more. Film by Hirokazu Suyama.
HIROSHIMA
A poem by Yuri Kageyama
they wander like a whisper
still
over this city
blending with the sea breeze
the soft light
the cracks of scars
not just one ghost or two
but tens of thousands
who all looked up and saw a flash
turning people into dead globs of charcoal;
there are no photos from that day,
they wander, crawling, naked, moaning,
flesh hanging like tatters;
they’re asking that question,
we did nothing wrong
why oh why
when all it can do is
kill kill kill kill
nothing else
turning skin eyeballs laughter head back legs
into a keloid of hell,
but no one really answers.
And here is that night’s version of our “Fukushima,” my hiphop poem, after which we got an encore from the audience and we did “Hiroshima.”
Hirokazu Suyama on tablas, Hiroshi Tokieda on bass and Yuuichiro Ishii on guitar. Film by Hirokazu Suyama.
FUKUSHIMA
A poem by Yuri Kageyama
Y’all, it’s a Meltdown nation
Since Three-Eleven
Covered in the fear
Of unseen radiation
But Don’t you expect
Any revolution
All you will find
Is fear and contamination.
Fukushima
Fukushima
Fukushima
Here in Fukushima
It rhymes with Hiroshima
Instead of a holler
Hear just a whimper
They say it is safe
The kids like Chernobyl
Are coming down sick
With Thyroid cancer.
Y’all, it’s no hallucination
The refugees’ life
No compensation
No resolution
Just nuclear explosions
Get your dosimeter
Cesium in the water
Lost Imagination
Fukushima
Fukushima
Fukushima
Here in Fukushima
It rhymes with Hiroshima
The radiated Brothers
Faces are hidden
Goggles and masks
Like an astronaut
From head to toe
The Invisible workers
Tsunami Demolition
God’s DeCreation
Genetic Devastation
Our next Generation.
Here in Fukushima
It rhymes with Hiroshima
No-go zones forever
The World must remember.
Fukushima
Fukushima
Fukushima
photo by Yuri Kageyama
HIROSHIMA
a poem by Yuri Kageyama and the Yuricane
Hirokazu Suyama on drums, Hiroshi Tokieda on bass and Yuuichiro Ishii on guitar.
Film by Adam Lewis.
At the Japan Writers Conference in Okinawa Nov. 2, 2013.
they wander like a whisper
still
over this city
blending with the sea breeze
the soft light
the cracks of scars
not just one ghost or two
but tens of thousands
who all looked up and saw a flash
turning people into dead globs of charcoal;
there are no photos from that day,
they wander, crawling, naked, moaning,
flesh hanging like tatters;
they’re asking that question,
we did nothing wrong
why oh why
when all it can do is
kill kill kill kill
nothing else
turning skin eyeballs laughter head back legs
into a keloid of hell,
but no one really answers.