Yiihin Chokin

I didn't want to keep this poem in my head
Was like a million dollars kept in bed
Then it hit me
There is no Great American poem
Except for maybe Howl
And I'm no Ginsberg
So I type my lonesome digital howl
Not from tenement rooftops
But from washitsu of my handsome home in the jungle
Where the wild things roam:
My kids and the hakubishin
The tanuki and the fukuro
The risu and the tombi
And my muse and amusement
That seems to come along with the never-ending sweat
I still get well into September

Oh, crash down on me
Sky so heavy, gravid, and gray!
Oh, rain on me, my day and mine.
Take away the hope I had
To write for someone other than myself!
As if it mattered.
Because I'm no Kerouac
And it was his book --
Some of the Dharma --
That fell out of my unpacking
That read like thunder
Though maybe I'm the only one
reading a magnificent stanza from
Some of the Dharma today.
So if anyone who reads this digital musing,
Today or tomorrow,
Thank you!
You are my hero
And you are here
With me now
With the hawk overhead
And in between the owl hoot
And squirrel bark
And kids' squeal
And whatever sound a civet makes
In the evening
Or late at might when my thoughts keep
Me annoyingly awake like a mosquito in the ear
Or an endless sound of nothingness
Boring more tunnels into emptiness,
Making room for more madness
And/or blissfulness
As is the case with this poem that couldn't wait to be written
RIGHT?!
Burning a hole in the poetic purse of mind at night,
Telling the community of poetry to fuck itself
And in the same breath beg for forgiveness
Not knowing I've found that voice I have always hoped I would
Just so I don't read like anyone else
Unmistakeably me
Though unread by you maybe,
Knowing I rolled so far from tree
The Poet Tree
Trite as I might ever want to be.
No fear:
Words
Are here today
Gone today
Anyway.
Would take a lot to say things in an A-bomb way,
But what poet would ever want that responsibility?
Not I.
Someday
Maybe
Kai, my son
My daughter Hana
Will read this
And that will be the day I'll ask God
To roll out the clouds and put on a show
For all humanity below.
Because I love my children
More than poetry
More than anything else on earth
Crazy, howling-from-tenement-window-and-rooftops type love
And then
I'll pack it in
Some of the Dharma under arm,
Befriending DT Suzuki along Philosophers Path
And learning all I can
In the eternity of poetry
And a universe filled with verse.