Thank you, Poets

Thank you,  Poets

I thank you on behalf of all the children

Of  the world. Your children,

Your children for change.

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The voice of  the poet, I learned today,

Is stronger than  blades of  swords,  stronger than bombs

That send black ashes into our skies,

Stronger than men  and women, armed  with false promises.

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The voice of the poet, I learned today

Is stronger than Hate, Greed,  Destroyers

Of our  planet Earth.

So thank you poets for your voice today.

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I will no longer need to ask,

What is love? What is Peace?

What is freedom?

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Thank you  poets, for  our planet,

For safe foods, pure air and water.

I will no longer need a dictionary or Google

To  define each word in our Constitution.

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I will be living them, because of you.

We will all hold hands and make visible

What it means to be one.

Thank you, Poets, for your poem for change.

    Frances Kakugawas from forthcoming book

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Today is Haiku Poetry Day.

Pink cherry blossoms

Break ripples on still waters

Red koi surfaces

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Footprints in warm sand

Lead slowly into the sea

Soon, smooth untouched sand.

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The haiku poet

Sits in the dense bamboo grove

Becoming bamboo.

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Two black and white swans

Send ripples across the lake.

Their dance becomes one.

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Dead Poets Alive

Here’s another poem for April is National Poetry Month. I still can’t separate the stanzas.

Dead Poets Alive

It was the dead who kept me alive

Those years growing up

Confined in a village so isolated,

The only communication by way of

An unpaved road without family cars,

A battery-run radio,

Three party line telephones.

It was the dead who took me beyond

Catalogs of Sears and Montgomery Ward,

Dream-makers of that remote village

On the day I discovered an oracle

Within the pages of poets long gone,

Promising a wondrous world

For the me, alive,but not yet formed.

Memorizing lines from “Thanatopsis,”

Reciting Poe’s “Annabel Lee,”

Aching with “How Do I Love Thee?”

Dreaming in isolation

In the attic with Emily Dickinson.

Yes, Yes, I said.

Believing in Sara Teasdale’s

“Life has loveliness to sell,”

I was impatient to meet those roads

Knowing I could not travel both.

I fantasized sinking a thousand ships

To becoming a phantom in delight,

And rage, rage against the dying of the night.

Damning those whose pain I wore.

Yes.

The dead gave me dreams

Of the woman I would become

Long before I became.

But oh, how “I wandered

Lonely as a cloud.”

From: Can I Have Your Pearl Bracelet by Frances Kakugawa:Watermark Publishing

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April is Poetry Month

            April

The poets, in droves

Lick their pens, salivating

Over metaphors, turning

Death into life. It must be

National Poetry Month.

            Poets for Peace

Each time a poet

Puts pen to paper,

There is a sliver of hope

For Peace.

            Voice from the Unborn

You promised me, eons ago,

 A world, free of battlefields, soldiers, children

Abandoned  in fear and hunger.

You offered me Hope, again and again.

A world, you said, where we will stand

Hand in hand, beyond  color, religion, gender, age,

 One race. One humanity.

You promised me a world

Free of poison in oceans, earth and air.

“You  are the future”, you told me,

“Come and be born in this world I will

Create  for  you.”

My brothers and sisters who believed you

Are now old men and women, and they wait.

They wait.

Listen to my voice, your unborn child.

Eons ago, you sliced the chrysanthemum

Off  its stalk and left it

Naked in the sun.

Over the ashes of Hiroshima,

Our victory was hailed.

Beneath that, my ancestors lay buried.

Stop using me, your unborn child

For promises and meaningless  rhetoric.

The future is now.  I can’t wait any longer.

The future is now.  I want to be  born.

Today.

   Frances  Kakugawa from What Kind of Ancestors Do You Want to Be by

U of Chicago Press. and from Dangerous Woman: Poetry for the Ageless, Watermark Publishing.

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Oslo, Sweden, at Arden

12-19-23

Most poets fantasize  being the Pulitzer or Nobel Prize Poet but when you’re from Kapoho, being crowned the Mall Poet is more than one can ask.

This morning at the end of my walk at the mall, Bob the Reader ( I have named all the walkers) presented me with the Arden Fair Mall Poet Laureate medal. Receiving this from Bob the Reader who doesn’t like poetry, was overwhelming. Walking out with the medal hanging over my sweatshirt, I thought of Oslo, Sweden where the Nobel Prize for Literature is presented.

Over 60 years ago, I  visited Oslo with a group of travelers from the University of Hawaii. A large group of us stood before the building where the Nobel Prize for Literature is annually presented. A representative from the building stood before us, pointed at me and said, “You will receive the Nobel Prize for Literature today. I will take all of you through the process of how this award is presented.” He gave me his arm and we walked up the steps to the entrance followed by the entourage of tourists. “Note the low steps,” he explained. “They are low so the ladies won’t step on their gowns.”

We entered the austere room and I was presented the imaginary award. Young and hopeful of becoming a writer someday, and being the chosen one for this role play, I couldn’t stop from thinking perhaps this was an omen of things to come. Today at the mall, as Bob draped the medal over my head, I was back in Sweden, receiving a medal that represents a friendship  more priceless than the $135,000 plus Nobel Prize award, even if my name is spelled incorrectly with an i.

12-20-23

I was stopped by other walkers today, asking me if I had the medal. So it looks like my fellow mall walkers were on it and Bob the Reader just couldn’t wait to present it to me with the group present. Tomorrow we are to meet at Bob’s table before the shops open.

12-21-23

I was officially crowned without fanfare or speeches, the Arden Fair Mall Poet Laureate. Bob ‘s home-baked Christmas cookies served on a paper plate were on the table. Each person took the medal to admire it and I knew I was among the dearest of friends who know nothing of me except that I write poetry.

I walk the mall daily and have made friends with walkers like Bob who somehow has “passed the word” that I’m a poet and the respect walkers show to poetry is heart-warming.

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A Childhood Christmas

A Kapoho Christmas

It was Christmas without lights.

It was Christmas without indoor plumbing.

It was Christmas without carolers at the window

Muffed and warm under falling snow.

But there was Christmas.

A Christmas program at school

The Holy Night reenacted:

White tissue paper glued on spines of coconut  fronds

Shaped as angel wings and halos.

Long white robes, over bare feet.

The plantation manager with bagfuls of assorted hard candies

His annual role in the village where he reigned.

Fathers in Sunday best

After a hard day’s work in sugar cane fields.

Mothers in dresses fashioned after Sears catalogs.

Children, restless, on wooden benches,

Waiting for Santa’s jolly Ho Ho Ho.

A fir tree from the hills,

Needles not lasting 24 hours.

Chains from construction paper,

Origami balls and strands of tin-foiled tinsel.

Kerosene and gas lamps

Moving shadows on the walls.

It was not the Christmas of my dreams.

No carolers at the window,

Singing Silent Night, Holy Night.

No large presents under a real Christmas tree

No fireplaces and rooftop chimneys.

No blue-eyed boy handing me hot chocolate.

For 18 years, the true Christmas

Lived in my head until Madame Pele

Came to my rescue from Kilauea crater

And buried our kerosene lamps.

Finally! I said, without a backward glance,

Running out fast in bare feet

On unpaved roads

To the Christmas of my dreams.

From Echoes of Kapoho  by Frances H. Kakugawa

 Watermark Publishing 2019

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A Haiku in the Making

“Patience,” said the sparrows, “we’re not done yet.”

dozens of sparrows

working to sort themselves out

To 5-7-5

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Pearl Harbor, 82 years ago in a little village in Hawaii, and it keeps happening again and again. Hatred instead of Peace. Hatred instead of human kindness.

   Under the rising sun
   The enemy came
   Wearing my face.

Immediately after they came, a new word was added to my childhood
vocabulary:

Eh Jap

   It claws my spine
   Tearing skin.
   It enters my body,
   To devour who I am.

   what do you do
   With Eh Jap
   On your face?
   Spit it out! Bull’s eye!

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A New Book

I’m happy to announce the release of my new book titled: Can I Have Your Pearl Bracelet? by Watermark Publishing. Friends in Hilo, I’ll be at Basically Books on February 24 at 1 p.m. Do drop by to say hello.My Oahu events are still in pencil. I’ll post the dates here once they’re in ink.

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