Let me go on to something else here.
My problem is getting longer, I started off years and years ago
writing very trim poems and now they're getting really long.
I don't know.
Like this one.
This one's called "The History of Karate."
For the last--
I don't know, six, seven years, I've been studying
martial arts different forms.
And so I decided, well, I got to write a karate poem.
So this is it.
Now I'm going to x out some things,
because it is really long.
"Our sensei scares me.
Karate is a kidney shot to your lover's wife's lover, not
a bow, not meditation or a student
crawling in reverence saying, sensei, sensei please.
He doesn't like Koreans and doesn't think much of us,
Eurasian, Mexican, Berkeley women with tattoos,
three Japanese sissy boys.
We sit cross-legged against the wall
asking questions about karate.
Questions like, is it possible to kill
a bull with your eyes closed?
What if it hurts breaking ice with her head?
Is it possible to swallow tacks?
Should we eat lightly before practice and bath in cold water
afterwards?
He tells us to shut up and reminds us
how he practiced in snow, not on wooden floors.
He points to the floor, this is nice, this and this and this.
He points to the overhead lights, the mirrors,
the punching bag still dented from one of its kicks."
I'm going to skip some things here.
"There are a lot of goons who practice karate in Japan.
When a student demonstration takes place
on campus, the Yakuza and the karate clubs, Shorinji Kempo,
Shuriken, Judo, and Aikido, that palsy-walsy martial art.
They go out and make the students bleed very badly.
Karate is right wing, protector of the state
and a good workout.
If you join a university club, you can never quit.
You may say, I'm bored and they say, you are not bored,
you say again, yes I am really bored,
and they say, no, you look happy.
This goes on for 20 minutes maybe in your car at a street
corner in your dorm before they bust you a couple of times
and suddenly you're not bored in the least.
In fact, you are happy.
You stay with the club and later when you graduate,
you get a job near the commuter line.
Your wife does what you want.
The family is proud that you did push ups in your youth
and hit a demonstrator so hard in his eye,
that now his eye is flowery like the inside of a marble.
They can now eat fish and sleep in rooms with coals piled high.
A PhD student did research on why people take karate.
They have nothing else to do, are often stupid,
were abused as kids, bullies pushed them to the ground
and told them to stay there, their tears froze
and their arms turned blue from the cold.
Before you knew it, the kids on the ground
were high school kids.
Wimps in the middle rows learning
things about the Euphrates.
Millions along its shore and only so much
of the water crawling to the sea.
The grown up kids who are on the ground suffer in their houses,
but so do the bullies who have put
on weight, rings of fat that cast remarkable shadows
over their crotches.
Some of the bullies go to jail, some die,
and others cut beef for a living, drive trucks.
They all breed with bully girls with orange hair.
The wimps get the good jobs.
Marry wives who believe in manners and potted plants
in a row.
In their late 20s, over dinner, the wimps remember the bullies.
The taste of roast beef dies in their mouths.
Suddenly angry, they take up karate.
They sweat a lot, kick badly, and enjoy
bowing before the wrong flag.
Every time they kick they say, oss
oss, which in Japanese means wimp, wimp."
Skip some more here.
"Karate was introduced from Okinawa to Tokyo in 1922
by Gichin Funakoshi at a national exhibition.
School officials in the military raised their eyes
eyebrows impressed.
If my mother had been Japanese, say
the granddaughter of master Funakoshi,
she would have used karate on me.
I was mean, three crazy dogs lived inside me.
I was so restless, so full of hard fun,
like throwing mud at girls and making the girls eat mud.
But she was Mexican not Japanese,
and had her own little tricks to beat the dogs down.
Funakoshi didn't believe in hurting children.
He himself was not strong but wise and good,
a great walker in his later years.
On his walks he enjoyed hearing karate screams bouncing off
walls, grunts to each knee, san shi go of calisthenics.
He enjoyed tea and calligraphy, Chinese scholarship,
and remembering his youth, which was long,
a careful ant crawling the length of bamboo.
Sometimes I think it's weird that a man can drive nails
into a board with his palm, knock out cows, punch
his fingers through watermelons.
You hate to get hit and we'll say anything about the spa.
Sensei, my toes hurt.
Sensei, I have feelings.
Sensei, I have a cold, my family is not yet born.
He likes his game of mild complaints.
And with hands on hips, stares at you.
That Mexican watermelon he could punch through,
would you spar anyway, first with the Berkeley women who
are all tattooed then the sissy boys,
then the Eurasian and finally the sensei who
throws a car on your chest?
Air is never so precious as when you're on the floor.
At home it's another story.
You shower, eat, play with your daughter, the cats
hug the cats, you hug your wife 100 times
because you're so happy to be alive.
And when they're not looking you throw a kick at air.
You admit you're a playground kid who never had enough--"
I'm going to stop this poem.
It goes on too long.
You have to read it in book form somewhere down the line.
But so once you joined a karate club in Japan, you can't quit.
It's like that's your pack and if you try to quit,
then you are sometimes beaten.
It's well, the way Japan sometimes works.
Someone did a study on that in the clubs in Japan.
There's another one Shorinji Kempo
which is a little more relaxed.
It's not as fierce as karate.