"and yuri"

i'm still reeling in my thoughts and feelings from last evening's benefit for asian american prisoners in japantown. it was such an amazing event. it shed light on the plight of eddy zheng and viet mike ngo, among others, prisoners who are being severely punished for requesting more ethnic studies classes in the san quentin prison college program. the whole event also furiously reminded me of how unjust and misconceived the prison system is in america. i don't really wanna lecture/preach right now but $50 billion dollars is spent each year to run prisons! in california, alone, there have been budget cuts that cut funds from education, from the caring for poor children and elders, from aid to disabled citizens ... while prison (and military) spending continue on and on. and then there are the plethora of horrible psychological effects of prison life. and how prison is the most racially segragated environment on the face of this planet. maaaaaaaaaan...

but maybe spoken word can really change the world. it changed me for sure. shailja patel, an indian woman, totally rocked the mic last night. she had this startling poem about chris mccarthy, a us soldier stationed in south korea who was sentenced to 6 years in jail for beating to death a korean bar waitress who refused to have sex with. poet ishle park was real cool, as usual. we all sang-a-long to bob marley after her set. humble and heroic yuri kochiyama, old school actvisit who dedicated her entire life to fighting against unjustice, encouraged us to keep up with the struggle. and bao phi, ol' bao phi, ended with a last poem "for us"

by bao phi, 2001: "for us"

this is for us
my people, who carry the song of burning sugar cane
in our lungs,
exhaling spirits with smoky spines
my people, who dig beneath seafoam with salted eyes
to exhume schools of ghosts
lost from the boats

this is for us, celestial, oriental, sikh
asian, asian american, man, woman, queer
broke, collegiate, young, old,
our beautiful black hair sticky
from colliding with sugar coated glass ceilings
the ones voted most likely assimilate
asians: the other white meat
bleached by colorblind lies
buying dkny and calvin klein
so our own bodies are gentrified
bedecked in sweatshop swooshes
resurfacing from under a pile
of the whote man's dirty laundry
to model our minority
cutting into our skin to get the right waistline
for our culture
showring fingers down the throat of our ancestors
to see what comes up

this is for us
taught to believe in magic
just not our own
mistaking appeasement for peace
and selling out for maturity,
while they box our geography
and sell it to bourgie boutiques
our culture quite profitable
but can someboy tell me
how our culture can be hip
and yet our people remain invisible?

divisible individuals
this ghosthood of honorary whiteness
miss saigonnng our way
into the pale arms of conmen

this is for us, twisting our names
into beached demons so that foreign tongues
could invoke them
mastering our own blondspeak scrabbletalk
this scored mishmash of grabbag didactics
cringing at the sound of our mothertongue's syllables
this is for us, who use our split lungs as divining
rods to find the flow of our last languages

this is for us
food stamp handed,
backs bent over microchips on conveyer belts,
hands like crumpled parchment from washing dishes,
microphones ablaze from poety and song
this is for us,
taking sharp turns in tangos
like breezes tied to lion's tails
this is for us
drunk off of friendship and stumbling through karaoke,
this is for us
the sugar of our love,
the kinship of our cupped hands
the riddles in our hair
which we pull out to make sure
it's still black
this is for our glowing yellowbrown skins blessing every horizon
and our souls haunting every twilight

this is for us,
who gathered the remains of fellow soldiers into cookie tins,
who sold cracked jade bracelets to raise our children,
who play hide and go seek with our ancestry,
who are forced to choose between silent and villain

this is for us, for all of us, who still don't know
how beautiful we are
this is for all of us, who still don't know how
beautiful we are
this is for those of us who run our fingers down
each others faces and swear that no one
would ever steal our beauty away again

this is for us
who wiped the milk
of honorary whiteness from our lips
and asked: got self?

my people, we area song that can never
stop singing against the silence,
we are lonely ears and lonely arms,

this is for us, this is for you,
this is for your momma, your father,
the street you cypher on,
the green terraces that haunt your dreams,

this is for the first time your hands curled
into a fist
for the time you killed and buried your sellout self
to become someone else
this is for the first time you picketed
for the first time you amplified your story

this is for us,
we are not dandelions, weeds thaty they uproot
so they can get their hands dirty on our soil,

we are sunflowers, a blazing field of brown eyes
standing together,

we douse our nerves with feathers and hot wax
cuz we know the only way to fly
is on the inside
so we fill the sky as black winged birds
eclipsing the day
drawing shadows across clouds

this is for you
this is for your yellow brown skin
this is for your black hair
this is for your black hair
this is for the the beautiful mirror i see in your eyes

this is for your voice
this is for you
my people
this
this
is for
us

UGH. damn. a night full of poetry and thought. that's one damn fine way to wrap up a long week.

dope song: typical cats' what you thought hops poetic dennis kim speaks accapella at first before dropping a real fine flow when the beat kicks in. dennis kim - or denizen kane - is one of those cats you have to see live.