John SOLT
MAI-SAN AND MY SON
read at their wedding
Heian Shrine, Kyoto
27 March 2003
I
The day before i met Ken
i went to the hospital
Sachiko was sweating and scared with labor pains
(by the way, the gynecologist, who also delivered George,
was later convicted and had his clinic shut down
because he left a pair of scissors in a patient
and she died)
how fragile life is!
when i entered the room
Obaachan was reciting Tenrikyo prayers
and made waves with her hands over Sachi's body
i had no training in the Lamaze method
but i thought i should do something useful
so i started breathing with Sachi
as if i had contractions
while i was breathing funny
and Obaachan acting like a shamaness
in a Kurosawa Akira-Mifune Toshiro film
Dr. Okamoto, who was still well respected
walked in, took a step back and said,
"Both of you, out of here right now. Come on."
II
The next day i met Ken
i held him in my arms
and he looked wrinkled and quite ugly
he had been vacuumed out
so the back of his round head
jutted out like an alien
but he was ours
the unforgettable heartbeat of being a parent
how fragile life is!
Ken surprised me many times
especially when he first crawled it was in reverse
i thought, "oh no, the psychedelics i'd taken as a hippie
must have made him strange"
then he became first a science major and later a doctor
and i stopped worrying about psychedelics
III
the day before i met Mai-san
i was reading Hokushu sennen no kotobuki
(District to the North, One Thousand Years of Good Luck
by Shokusanjin, a.k.a. Ota Nampo, from 1818)
while watching the video dance performance of it
by Hanayagi Juraku-sensei, living national treasure
Mai-san, through Kei Chifune-sensei
was in the same Hanayagi lineage
a karmic thread weaves us all together
how fragile life is!
Hokushu is a felicitous dance play
these word fragments appear:
"the white crane of a thousand years
sings pleasures for a myriad decades.
the shell of the tortoise by the pond of
10,000 ages bears mystic markings.
the great gate is rich in flowing sleeves.
decorated with green pines,
willows and cherry blossoms.
the bamboo blinds are up
and a cuckoo sings.
speeded by love a journey
of a thousand miles is
as brief as that of a single mile.
each sight, each sound of the four seasons
as it passes,
is not paradise itself like this?
may you live a thousand ages
may you live a thousand ages."
IV
the next day i met Mai-san
and we ate sushi and drank and laughed together
with my sons Ken and George
over the next few days we spoke more
sometimes sounding serious
about learning English, her new life
maybe lucky but far away
and i was relieved to see Mai-san
and my son so happy together
having fun planning their future
once ten years ago when Ken was eighteen
he told me he believed in love
and wanted nothing more than a family one day
and to be a better husband than i had been
how fragile life is!
----------------------------
two fireflies
stuck together
sway and swing
across the stars
----------------------------
you claim to be post-
modern and post-
colonial
but are you post-
middle class?
----------------------------
he capped his cock
and cocked his hat
----------------------------
i give broken things
to monks
because they understand
impermanence
--------------------------------
she shook like a leaf
at the prospect
of sitting still
--------------------------------
the unsayable
is unsellable
--------------------------------
you are a movie star
without the movie
--------------------------------
his interchangeable masks
turned him into
a permanent shortchanger
-------------------------------
words eaten away
to less than letters
-------------------------------
why are locals
everywhere
so entrenched?
----------------------------------
you talk softly
about spreading light
after you leave the room
darkness follows
---------------------------------
hell with her
is better than
heaven with you
---------------------------------
putting friends
together
backfired
like a fart
in a tunnel
----------------------------------
with all you
can have
how much
do you want?
-------------------------------
he brushed up
against
her underbrush
-------------------------------
"back off"
he cautioned
the elevator
-------------------------------
anti-war soldiers
once played
with toy soldiers
-------------------------------
there's a paradigm shift
every time you sneeze
-------------------------------
no longer dead
she crawled out the window
and jumped
-------------------------------
sometimes
i want to be your monkey
climb your tree
pull your fruit
-------------------------------
messages messages
cute ads
vying for ironic space
cow's four stomachs
no room for dessert
----------------------------------
living in a postcard world
----------------------------------
you're the match
i'm the gasoline
---------------------------------
that thought
was an extension
of a lost one
rekindled days later
----------------------------------
it's raining today
i'm swimming
in her eyes
----------------------------------
what in our minds
is unacceptable
to tomorrow?
----------------------------------
when kickbacks
are sizeable
they'll call you
"little brother"
--------------------------------
lightning
from cloud
to steeple
in 1/1000th
of a second
stretch marks
on your thighs
--------------------------------
how many times
i've avoided death
and never knew it
even later
--------------------------------
can a culture
ever let go
of itself?
--------------------------------
those demons had been
lurking in me
for centuries
--------------------------------
civilian casualties
in World War I were 5%
in World War II 50%
in the 1990s 75%
whose poem is that?
--------------------------------
she is like
butterflies
and flowers
in the room
-------------------------------
the mathematics
of coming
--------------------------------