And ching chong wing wong hai oh to you too
I don't know what language it is, but it's not Japanese
(I don't speak Japanese, I speak English.)
I was born in Pittsburgh to Chinese parents,
Grew up speaking English with my brother,
And that shit's not English either.
I think now it's dumb-ass drunk cunt for something hateful
And ignorant and spiteful and if so I'd have shouted it
Back in your sloppy face as loud as I can.
I should have said fuck you, fuck your bullshit,
Fuck me for holding the door open for you as you walked
Out, I walked in, and we could have remained parallel,
We could have intersected with nothing but a hello
a smile, a wave, a good fucking night to be had.
Instead you went out of your way to fuck with the
Shivering, quiet stranger, coming in from the cold, lips bleeding
Exhausted from the walk home at 3 am, the dark soulless
Hour that brings out the longest, barbed thoughts in us
That drags out our innards with them, and you assume I don't speak
English because I'm... what? My skin is a different hue, yellow maybe,
And my eyes are slanty? Fuck you, I'm as American as they come:
I'm overweight, I'm diabetic, I'm filled with self-loathing, I smoke,
I drink, I'm in god damn love with the fucking English language.
This is my god damn bread and butter, and God knows I speak it
better than you, God knows I respect it more than you do,
God knows I respected you more than you will respect me,
And God knows you don't deserve the quiet ease of living here.
I do. I hope you step out in the cold and freeze
And die, and that you leave a piss-poor, ugly corpse.
We have an insult in Cantonese: Pok gai. It means die in the street.
Forgotten, unloved, unwashed, unwanted, bloated body burst
by tire treads. I hope your friends hate you, I hope your lovers leave you,
I hope you feel as alone as I feel.
But I didn't say anything then but stammer
I... I'm Americ-
As I looked speechless, at the back of your head,
your beautiful, meticulous braids shaking with laughter.
I don't want you to die. I don't know you.
I'm sorry that we met like this, and I'm sorry that we leave
in opposite directions.
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15 comments:
kind of vapid, not so much poetry as an outlet for your emotions. not a bad thing, however. forget ignorant cunts and channel your energy towards more pressing matters.
Poetry can be an outlet for emotion. I had a preoccupation with grandiose themes and long extended metaphors and whatnot but I'm exploring right now the poetry of deliberate plain speech. I'm not saying I disagree with you, but don't you ever dare tell anyone what to write about or what not to write about, or ever say "this isn't a poem". That's a very good way to 1) annoy people and 2) often is a lazy excuse for not having anything constructive to say. If this wasn't intended to be a poem I'd have written it as prose. The things I do and the way I write it are very deliberate, not just "word-vomiting" in a word processor. I'm not that fucking amateurish and to be honest I'm a little insulted. I do agree however that there is a lack of focus which if anything will be rectified in revision. Thanks for taking the time to read this.
Though considering the fact that I'm trying to both mimic an angry rant and provide the distance of hindsight, the fact that the artifice is not as clear in this as you seem to expect from poetry might not be a bad thing.
Not once did I tell you what to write. I only suggested you move past the incident, as anger does more damage to the vessel in which it is stored than who it is intended for. I am personally not a fan of poetry that sounds like dissected prose so I am biased, perhaps wrongly so, and for that I apologize. You are right in saying that I offered no input, I glanced over the piece and did not take the time to fully evaluate it. I have never been a target of racism and thus have no empathy towards the situation; I can not possibly understand how such an ignorant comment may have made you feel. I apologize for this as well. I am being entirely sincere.
However, the fact that you took such defense to an off-hand statement leads me to believe that you have deep-seated psychological issues that extend past the scope of my comment. I can only imagine how poorly you take criticism from others. I wouldn't bother to revise it as I'm sure nobody cares to read the plights of yet another self-loathing upper class pissant (reflected in the fact that your blog is devoid of comments). Your closing passive-aggressive insult is anything but clever and falls on deaf ears. I will mourn the loss of our Facebook friendship for 40 nights and days.
Pick a paragraph and move the fuck on.
Why do you assume I'm upper class?
Also, let me begin again by apologizing for misunderstanding you. When you said "forget ignorant cunts and channel your energy towards more pressing matters." I took that as meaning that the subject of this poem is unimportant. That's why I told you not to tell people what to write, and what I mostly took offense at. Now that you've clarified, I can see that I was totally in the wrong in that regard and I am sorry. No excuses, no equivocation, just my sincere apology.
The other thing that annoyed me was something you just confirmed: that you didn't do anything but glance over and then immediately write this piece off. If that's the case, then don't bother commenting. I offer constructive criticism to other people's works when I can, and even if I only have something positive or negative to say I at least try to show them that I gave their work the respect it deserves in responding to it. I took offense to the fact that it WAS an off-hand statement, but your assumption of deep-seated psychological issues are neither here nor there. Perhaps it is true, but what I was responding to were those two things I took away from your initial comment, and what moved me to respond in length was simply passion for what I do. The fact that you defaulted to personal attacks, however suggests to me that you were never willing to take this conversation seriously, so I wonder now what the point is in responding again. If you did so because you felt insulted, I apologize again. I had no intention of insulting you. I don't know where you got a "passive-aggressive insult" from, but that was never my intention. To insult you would've been to partially disregard the importance of what you said and I hope I've made it clear that I took even your off-hand comment to heart. If you read "Though considering the fact that I'm trying to both mimic an angry rant and provide the distance of hindsight, the fact that the artifice is not as clear in this as you seem to expect from poetry might not be a bad thing." as an insult then... how can I apologize again? I'm sorry, the comment was intended to be a musing on how well I executed my idea and nothing more. If you took offense, then I obviously did not articulate myself well enough and that is my own fault.
And now, because I am petty and human and immature, I'm afraid I have to end on this note: There is no one here to impress. As you've said, this blog has few readers if indeed any, but that is not why I maintain it: tt is a personal portfolio and a way to track artistic growth. Insulting me does nothing, and for your opening cliche of "anger does more damage to the vessel in which it is stored than who it is intended for" you still prove yourself a hypocrite with your bitterness and obvious anger. I did not and will not mourn the loss of our facebook friendship or even the end of this conversation because even though I've benefited from what you've had to say, you're still an arrogant douchebag who thinks they are far too intelligent for their own good. As for your trite and unrelated concluding statement, again I remind you that there is no one here to impress with pseudo-intellectual posturing but me and that's obviously not working out too well.
I have a completely undeserved superiority complex, that much is true. You are also right in my never taking this seriously, attacking you ad hominem was my waying of killing a few minutes before work. Like I said, move on.
And though you are ridiculously easy to troll, know that I have nothing but respect for what you are doing on this blog. I just like to fling shit.
Okay I'm actually done now
Stand behind what you say or don't say it at all. What little respect I had for you is completely gone now.
I never withdrew anything I said, I suppose honesty is considered a weakness by your kind. I am indifferent. At the end of the day you are still a thin-skinned virgin that will squander his life replying to trolls and drowning in alcohol and self pity.
But I will quit attacking your character as a child would and focus on your work.
This is fun! By writing off what you said as just "trolling" or messing around you show that you don't even respect what you say yourself. That, or you're backing away from it because you realize you're at fault. As for your point about replying to trolls, I legitimately enjoy this sparring of sorts we have going on here, but if that's how you view it why do YOU continue to put your time into this? And finally, you're not actually good at attacking character or trolling. Insults are no replacement for truly getting to know someone, getting under their skin, and then completely tearing them down.
I'm choosing to believe you're simply being lazy, and aren't just a foul-mouthed idiot trying to seem more profound than he really is.
I am the one at fault, for the most part, because I was the one that initially misinterpreted what you said as a subtle insult. Anything that follows is mock vanity.
Also there is no avenue to 'tear you down' because, as you noted, I have exhausted my resources through insults. I know little about you, so of course I'm no good at attacking your character; everything I say is speculation. Though, there is probably some truth in me being lazy.
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