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Posts Tagged ‘April Poetry Month’

Have you ever gone through the belongings of your loved ones after they’re gone?

In 2002, I found in my mother’s bureau, every Mother’s Day card she had received from her children. Included were hand-written letters of thanks sent by her physician. These letters told me my mother had regularly dropped off orchids and papayas from the farm where she worked. I sent these letters back to the doctor and he was totally moved that my mother had saved each one. She lost to Alzheimer’s but I found her stories in her belongings.

Allow me to share a poem I wrote after observing two people exchange phone numbers. They deftly added numbers to their smart phones. What will we have after electronic devices are deleted? I apologize for Blog not printing my poems with stanzas.

Address Books and Match Book Covers

When I am dead, my dearest,

Will you draw a  Sharpie marker

Through my name, write Dead in bold caps

Or simply press Delete

To eradicate me forever?

Or will you preserve my name under K

And years from now…

On a cold wintry afternoon when friends

Have deserted you and boredom sets in,

You flip through your address book and pause at K .

Under the slow – changing day into night, my name appears.

You say my name and soon stories appear and you  smile and even chuckle

When there was a me and a you.

Perhaps memories will take you to a shoe box labeled FHK

In a spider-webbed corner of the garage.

You find old faded match covers. Match covers?

Yes, match covers. You flip one open and see faded numbers.

Is it a hurriedly written phone number of a handsome stranger I once met

In a coffee shop or in a bar?   Did I call that number and did a story begin?

 Should you play sleuth and call that number? He must be long gone by now.

Are there match covers in other garages? 

A shoe box of mysteries keep you awake until dawn.

Ah ha…and you thought I was gone forever.

©frances h kakugawa

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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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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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My new blog is posted below this. Can’t figure out why. grrrrrr.

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

And War and Peace.

***

You  wish to be the most feared?

The most statued figure in all of Russia?

Be among the true greats of 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 and Leningard

Poet of Peace.

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A Poet-Dad

A Poet/Dad and his Poet/Son

We turned into poets in all of my classes, grades K-6 during my teaching career. Robert Webster was a sixth grader at Nimitz Elem in Hawaii. One day, I watched him write the last line to a poem. Beads of perspiration rolled down his nose. He dropped his pen and I heard him whisper, “ I’m all poemed out.”

Here’s an excerpt from one of his poems.

“Writing is wonderful.

It is a thing that can make the dumb speak,

The deaf to hear, and the blind to see.

Writing can bring out true emotions

That we usually don’t see,

And it brings out our true selves…”

The rest of this poem appears in my book, Teacher, You Look Like a Horse. Robert helped to write the last chapter with a few other students. They were all adults then, but still listened to their teacher when I asked them for help. Robert never left. After sixth grade, he stayed in touch through high school and college and now as a father to three sons with wife Erica.

I have lunched with Robert and his family in New York City twice and the poetry man is still there. How wonderful to have a poetry man for a dad.

Here are three poems from the next generation of Websters, written by son Samuel when he was eight years old.

Me and My Cat

Tommy loves it

When I scratch him under

His chin.

You can sleep in my bed,

Tommy.

Do you want to read with me,

Tommy?

Now this is relaxing!

Sunny Day

Today I woke up

On a sunny day.

I went to my friend’s house

On that sunny day.

I played throw and catch

At my friend’s house

Until it was dark

On that sunny day.

Monkey

Crazy, cute

Running, climbing, swinging

Eating, jumping, sleeping

Bananas, trees, vines

Hairy, agile

©Samuel Charles Webster

8 years old

Guilderland, New York

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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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Growing up in remote Kapoho, I, too, found solace in poets long gone.

            Dead Poets Alive

The dead kept me alive

Confined to a village so isolated,

So unpaved, so un-vehicled,

So battery-run. Our three-party line

A public service gossip center.

The speechless dead took me beyond

Montgomery Ward catalogs, dream-makers

Until one day I discover an oracle

Within the pages, poets long gone.

Promises of wondrous worlds

For the me not yet formed.

Oh, how I mourn that “breath of ecstasy”

To travel that road where dreams can go

Though not so much “in depth and breadth and height

My soul can reach.”

And like a little “nobody” to “lie down

To pleasant dreams.”

It was the dead who gave me such dreams

And showed the woman I’d become

To wander where they could not go

And wonder at what got them there.

My morning still lay ahead, I still “had miles to go.”

And oh, how “I wandered lonely as a cloud.”

   from Dangerous Woman: Poetry for the Ageless

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I wrote the following to honor a teenager who stopped by my book signing in Honolulu.

A Stranger Among Us

Three young lads walk the mall

Passing my book signing at Barnes & Noble.

One lad breaks away

After turning his head

Toward the book display

On a tripod near me.

“What kind of book is this?

Did you write this?”

“Yes,” I say to the lad

Wearing a tiny hoop in one lobe,

A silver stud in his nose.

“This is a book of poems on caregiving.”

“I write poems, too. I set them to music.

Do you want to hear one of my poems?”

He rapped his poem in perfect rhythm,

Musical rhymes, poignantly searching

For the meaning of life.

I open my book to offer him

My simple poem, “A Poet’s Declaration.”

He reads it, looks at me and quietly says,

“You’re the first person who understands me.”

We talk of how it is

To be a poet…

The aloneness, the pain, the joy.

“No one knows me as you do.”

He hands me Mosaic Moon,

I sign it To Jason.

“Dammit,” I think, after he leaves

To join his two companions

With my book in his hand…

“How did one poem from a stranger

Help him feel there is someone after all,

Who knows and understands him?

How did he recently leave

Thirteen years of school behind him,

A lonely stranger?

frances kakugawa

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We turned into poets in all of my classes, grades K-6 during my teaching career. Robert Webster was a sixth grader at Nimitz Elem in Hawaii. One day, I watched him write the last line to a poem. Beads of perspiration rolled down his nose. He dropped his pen and I heard him whisper, “ I’m all poemed out.”

Here’s an excerpt from one of his poems.

“Writing is wonderful.

It is a thing that can make the dumb speak,

The deaf to hear, and the blind to see.

Writing can bring out true emotions

That we usually don’t see,

And it brings out our true selves…”

The rest of this poem appears in my book, Teacher, You Look Like a Horse. Robert helped to write the last chapter with a few other students. They were all adults then, but still listened to their teacher when I asked them for help.  Robert never left. After sixth grade, he stayed in touch through high school and college and now as a father to three sons with wife Erica.

I have lunched with Robert and his family in New York City twice and the poetry man is still there. How wonderful to have a poetry man for a dad.

Here are three poems from the next generation of Websters, written by son Samuel when he was eight years old.

 

Me and My Cat

Tommy loves it

When I scratch him under

His chin.

You can sleep in my bed,

Tommy.

Do you want to read with me,

Tommy?

Now this is relaxing!

 

 

Sunny Day

Today I woke up

On a sunny day.

I went to my friend’s house

On that sunny day.

I played throw and catch

At my friend’s house

Until it was dark

On that sunny day.

 

 

Monkey

Crazy, cute

Running, climbing, swinging

Eating, jumping, sleeping

Bananas, trees, vines

Hairy, agile

 

©Samuel Charles Webster

8 years old

Guilderland, New York

 

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