Raised by Wolves with Apologies to Wolves

Are we letting wolves raise our children?

I walk inside the mall before the shops open and exchange “Good Morning” with a few regular walkers.Twice last week, when I said “Good Morning” to two young adults, they looked stunned and said, “Oh, okay.” They reminded me of a young man who sat next to me on a flight to Hawai’i.

Raised by Wolves

A young man buckles himself next to me,

Connected to wires and earbuds.

He grunts to my Hello without meeting my eyes.

Soon we are flying over the Pacific

Nary a word between our proximity.

An hour into flight, breakfast trays appear.

He leans over his mushroom cheese crepes,

Stabs his fork into one, lifts the crepe to his mouth,

Takes a bite and drops the rest of the crepe to his plate.

 He was raised by wolves, this much I know.

He picks up a piece of cantaloupe with his fingers

Takes a bite, moves his face over his tray and drops

The size too large for a bite back to his plate.

His utensils, ignored like the napkin on his tray.

My teacher mode kicks in.

Learn by observing, child raised by wolves.

Learn by observing.

Miss Manners and Emily Post at his service

I use each silverware and my napkin, too.

Attempt again for conversation over breakfast.

“Let me guess,” I begin.

No, No, I didn’t ask,” Were you raised by wolves?”

Miss Manners was still around.

“You’re a college student returning home for summer break.”

He flashes his first smile. He finished his junior year in college,

Flying home with hopes of finding a summer job.

I drink my cup of decaf coffee, wish him well.

I was wrong, not raised by wolves, perhaps

By Fast Foods finger foods and his SmartPhone.

    ©Frances H Kakugawa

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Hey Putin

The poets in droves

Lick their pens

Succumbing to poems

Demanding to be heard.

This must be April,

National Poetry Month.

*******

Hey  Putin,

Sit back a week or two

With your Russian predecessors  

Etched in the world with admiration and honor

Unlike tyrants, murderers, war criminals

Covered with ashes and human blood,

On dusty back shelves of Russian history.

Listen to Tchaikovsky’s symphonies –

Spend an evening with Swan Lake –

Get on your yacht with Leo Tolstoy

With War and Peace.

You  wish to be the most admired?

The most honored statue in all of Russia?

Be amongst the true greats in your history books?

Pick up your pen, Putin.

Poets were feared more than the KGB

During days of famine and war.

Pick up your pen, Putin,

Write a poem or two or more.

On the shelves of  891.71,

Between Tsvetaeva and Pushkin

There is space for you.

A statue of  Putin?

In St. Petersburg ?

Putin: Poet of Peace

Covered white

From Birds of Peace

Soaring above.

  ©frances kakugawa

(Written after seeing images in Ukraine)

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April: Poetry Month

April

The poets, in droves

Lick their pens, salivating

Over metaphors, turning

Death into life. It must be

National Poetry Month.

******************************

Each time a poet

Puts pen to paper,

There is a sliver of hope

For Peace.

*****************

The Pen

I was but a child

When I wrote my first line of poetry

That senselessly rhymed.

I innocently thought

It would be my ticket

Out of God-forsaken Kapoho:

A ticket away from kerosene lamps,

Outhouses, battery-run radios,

And Pidgin English.

A ticket to Greenwich Village, New York City,

Paris, and Stockholm, Sweden.

Little did I know

That poetry would help me embrace

Each Ukraine standing tall

To the miniscule monstrous thief.

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A morning walk

---

Thank you black crow

For your company this morn.

Are you Poe’s raven

Calling Nevermore?

 

Thank you majestic oak

For the symphony above

Hi C’s, low C’s

A chorus of chirps, baton free.

 

Oh, sparrows, sparrows

Wait, wait, you can’t go

Seven on a telephone line,

Complete your haiku ere you go.

 

Such was my walk this Friday morn,

Around the silent mall

With nature’s best

For companionship.

 

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Poem #2 for Poetry Month

Men in Disguise at Book Signings

 

“Did your husband write all these books?”

He was in the audience a few minutes ago.

Yet, here he stands in his three piece designer suit

Scanning book titles with furrowed brows.

 

“Idiot,” I didn’t say, “Would I be sitting here,

Two hours on my hemorrhoids

Signing someone else’s books

With carpal tunneled fingers?”

 

At Barnes & Noble in Hawaii,

The FBI disguised in a loud Aloha shirt,

A wilted orchid  lei, a camera strapped like a gun

Interrogates me.

“You wrote these books?”

Not satisfied, he grills me over hot coals again.

“You? You wrote all these books?”

 

Ready to turn the lamp on me,

He turns to his partner.

“Martha? Martha? Come on over.

She said she wrote all these books!”

Expecting the click of handcuffs,

Water boarding or worse,

I remain silent.

 

A man in his black robe

Sits on the Court bench.

The Advertiser news  story of my poetry book

Spread across his lap.

“A Japanese woman publishing poetry…

No Japanese man” he prophesized,

Is ever going to date her.

She crossed over into the Haole ( white) world

With this poetry book.”

 

Yes, Your Honor.

Japanese. Woman. Poet.

Guilty as charged.

 

Frances Kakugawa

 

 

 

 

 

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April: National Poetry Month

April

The poets, in droves

Lick their pens, salivating

Over metaphors, turning

Death into life. It must be

National Poetry Month.

fhk

 

During one of my poetry writing sessions with 3^rd graders, this was my contribution. Not quite up to par with my students’ poetry.

 

A Poet’s Declaration

 

I am a star

In the Milky Way.

I am the crest

On emerald waves.

I am a dewdrop, crystal clear,

Capturing sunbeams in the morning mist.

I am that dust

On butterfly wings.

I am that song

Of a thousand strings.

I am that teardrop

You have kissed.

I am a poet!

I am! I am!

I am that rage

In the thunderstorm,

I am that image

Of a thousand form.

I am magic on each page.

I am a poet!

I am! I am!

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CA State University, Sacramento: A Zombie campus

OMG! It has happened.

I was on campus last week to speak on Haiku poetry in one of the classes.  I stopped the teacher who was accompanying me.

“Listen, “ I said. “It is soooo quiet. I don’t hear any human voices.”

We were not alone. There were students all around me but I heard no human voices. They were attached to their electronic devices, strolling toward their destination. It was like being in a zombie movie with shadows of human beings walking all around me in silence. I felt the creep.

At the coffee shop, I observed couples at a table, but couldn’t even eavesdrop to their conversations because there were none. Maybe I’m too late with this poem I’ve shared before:

 

To Children of the 21^st Century

 

How do you keep your fingers so free of dirt?

How do you come in from play  without

Mud on your feet, your clothes, your cheeks?

How do you not even sweat?

 

How do you speak without giving eye contact

To the person sitting in front of you?

How do you spend time with your friend

Without conversation?

 

Oh Children of the 21^st Century,

Why is there silence in a room filled

With family on this holiday?

How did you become so mute?

 

Do you know how rain feels

Soaking your shirt to your skin?

The smell of sea salt in your hair

After a dip in the sea?

 

Have you watched a little seed

Pushing  its first breath

Out of soil you’ve patted down

A few weeks ago?

 

Can you see a cardinal, a mynah,

A crow, with your eyes closed, listening

To their signature  songs  they sing out to you

In your own back yard?

 

Do you know the feel of your grandpa’s grip

Warm and strong in your hand?

The story behind that  long scar that runs

The length of his arm?

 

Do you carry memories

Of your  grandma’s smiles

Each time you had said,

Hi Grandma. Can I help you?

 

Do you ever count clouds, lying

On soft green grass, laughing

Over silly stuff shared with a friend?

Do you ever cry over a child starving

In Africa or in your neighborhood?

Feel upset over trees being cut

For freeways and shopping malls,

Fancy sports arenas?

 

Have you ever used the eraser

At the end of a pencil,

Writing a poem, a song, a story.

A thank you note?

 

Do you know the feel of crisp

New pages of a book, as they unfold

Moving plots, faster than your impatient

Fingers can follow your eyes?

 

Oh, Children of the 21^st Century,

How did you become so dead?

 

From Dangerous Woman: Poetry for the Ageless by

frances h kakugawa

 

 

 

 

 

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3 of my favorite quotes for Poetry Month

 

“There is no poetry for the practical man. There is poetry only for the mankind of the man who spends a certain amount of his life turning the mechanical wheel. But let him spend too much of his life at the mechanics of practicality and either he must become something less than a man, or his very mechanical efficiency will become impaired by the frustrations stored up in his irrational human personality.
An ulcer, gentlemen, is an unkissed imagination taking its revenge for having been jilted. It is an unwritten poem, a neglected music, an unpainted water color, an undanced dance. It is a declaration from the mankind of the man that a clear spring of joy has not been tapped, and that it must break through, muddily, on its own.”
– John Ciardi

 

“Poems are not written to sing of the moon and flowers; they must speak of our hearts in response to the moon and flowers. We must never forget that in our hearts are the seeds of our poems. If we merely speak of the moon and flowers, poems become simply poetical forms, whatever the human heart may be. If these things become a part of ourselves, then we may admire them in verse.”
– Okuman Kotomichi
19th century

 

“A haiku . . . is a hand beckoning, a door half-opened, a mirror wiped clean. It is a way of returning to nature, to our moon nature, our cherry blossom nature, our falling leaf nature, in short, to our Buddha nature. It is a way in which the cold winter rain, the swallows of evening, even the very day in its hotness, and the length of the night become truly alive, share in our humanity, speak their own silent and expressive language.”

— R. H. Blyth, Haiku, Volume 1, page 243

 

 

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   This thing called life,  passion, feelings or  sexuality belongs to us, men and women of all ages.

We still see things we shouldn’t see –

We still feel things we shouldn’t feel-

We still hear things we shouldn’t hear-

We still taste grief, joy, fear,

In a world that vibrates

Through all of my senses.

We are not dead yet.

   Definition

Do not define me by age.

I am not Roosevelt, Truman,

Eisenhower, or JFK.

 

Do not define me by blue veins

bulging out on my spidery arms,

my gobbler, once a Hepburn, Audrey.

 

Do not define me by Rorschach,

On skin brushed with indelible ink.

A Pollock on the wall of MOMA.

 

Do not define me by a new dance step

Shuffling, shuffling –

My heels replaced by clogs.

 

I am

a rabbit out of a hat,

a three ring circus without net,

A whodunit without clues.

War and Peace, chapter one,

The second act.

 

I am

Without epilog.

from my Dangerous Women: Poetry for the Ageless

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Poets for Peace for April: Poetry Month

 

When I was in high school, Russia and Communism were taboo subjects; they were feared into silence. One day I read where poets were the most feared in Russia and my passion for poetry empowered me and I became less and less fearful as I kept on writing. I felt the more poetry I read and wrote, the weaker the enemy became. Nothing has changed so we keep on writing.

Poets for Peace

Each time a poet
Puts pen to paper,
There is a sliver of hope
For Peace.

from my Dangerous Woman: Poetry for the Ageless

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