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 A RAINY DAY By Yuri Kageyama
Separated
Kimono sleeves are wet though
It is not raining
あえぬひと
きものぬれるや
ふらぬ雨
#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.”
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
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
By Coincidence _ a poem by Yuri Kageyama
偶然は
ないようであるし
あるようでない
全ては必然
あるべきは
うまれるまえから
宇宙のはてまで
つながってる
目の前の永遠を
見逃さない
耳
目
心
持てるかは
偶然では
ない
What’s in a Name
By Yuri Kageyama
Oct. 17, 2021 at a Japan Writers Conference presentation on lyric poetry by Michael Frazier
Expanded Nov. 6, 2021
Yuri in Japanese
Means “superior reasoning”
But all while I was growing up
I was Julie
Because no one can say Yuri
Though Julie really doesn’t sound like
Yuri Yoo-hoo You-lie
Just a way to make sure a Kid gets it,
Who she is,
Yellow face gook smile slant eyes:
I was 6
When I was called the J-word,
Funny how we remember
No matter how many years pass;
I was on the school bus,
The boy who yelled it out was laughing
(I came home and asked my father what it meant)
We are that missing face
That missing name, missing word, missing voice
Devoid of Definition,
That deep pathetic silence
Between meanings
Like a choked sigh drifting through history
In that eternal American conversation
Between White
And Black