AMERASIA 1 5 :1 (1 989), 1 95-2 1 8

Hanging on to the Carabao's Tail

AL ROBLES
I was moved by Russell Leong's excellent essay on Asian American poetry, because it brought back many memories-memories that are still alive in my mind-memories that were painful and beautiful then, and still painful and beautiful now-memories that cannot be erased or buried. To survive in this life, we need to have good memories that bring us joy and happiness; we do not want to remember the loneliness, the pain, the sadness. Yet as a poet, I would much rather have all the bad experiences-the pain, the loneliness, the sorrow, the sadness-than all the happiness and joy. I would not give up all the bad experiences for the good and happy ones. Though I have known many of the poets intimately, and while some have gone to greater things-others have passed on, like Joaquin Legaspi of Manilatown, Serafin Syquia, Edward0 Badajos, Mariano Bayani, and Francis Oka. Furthermore, they were not "tragicfigures" in the literary sense of the word. More or less, these Asian American poets played an important role in my life. They still continue to be part of my everyday thinking; they were all powerful poets, in the sense that they went beyond the community, beyond themselves, searching for a deeper meaning in their poetry and life. When we live in the community or dedicate our lives to it, we become attached or caught by it, as it were, in family ties and friendships-ties so great that they become an integral part of our thinking. But loyalty in the community should never be one-sided; it should never dictate one's life-nor should it regulate or control one's thinking. This is one of the dangers of a community of poets who do not care to share or be open to other communities. But there was always a celebrationof some kind-a celebration to bring communities together culturally. But that would rarely happen, if we did not step outside ourselves. Thus I had one vision, then, when I was organizing an Asian American Senior Festival-to bring the Filipinos, Chinese, and the Japanese
AL ROBLES lives i San Francisco and is a Poet. n

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together for one great celebration-to bring them all to a place called Manilatown to celebrate their lives, to honor them with songs, dance, music and poetry. I remember I was told by some groups to leave them alone. "DOnot bring them together. They are satisfied to be in their own communities." I can still hear everything, every single sound-alive and warm as the first day of spring in Agbayani Village, in Delano, where the cocks cry out as the sun goes down. My mind's struck by lightning, fleeting but returning again and again to this place which changes and is always different than before.
the lightning f a h s lse how w walk on! e some bend low. some change and l s e ,l s e i t n itn n t i g s left ohn' but f e h grass rs

Indeed, as we go a step further, do we not in fact unlearn all that we have learned by listening to new sounds,by not anticipatingor expectinganything but letting it flow with life. Even when you scoop up a handful of rice, there is no need to measure it, or to know how much or how far the rice will go. It empties itself into a bellyful of poetry that flows out so naturally. We rise out of our nip huts, our mountain retreats, tea houses, from behind tropical mangoes and papayas and bananas and a bamboo forest into a poetical world. ..yet our world has always been poetical. We live with our poetry in the neighborhood, the community, in the lives of our people. But we go farther more or less viewing things differently.
Rebirth o One Hundred Thousand T i a Songs f rbl Baynagyanak-babonyan:ilokano-tagalog-bontoc tinggian-sabanum-tagbamua-bikol-basaya-bogobo-tiurai-mdya tatok-moro-naboli-bemave-sapao-kiangan-nag~unan-maggock lamot-asin-nigritoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo igoroteeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee ifugaooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo~ooooo pilipinooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

yao-shun-tai-hao-y en-ti-shao-hao-chuan-hsu kou mang-chu yung-hu t'u-ju shou-hsuan ming-fu h i s t'ai hawking king-shen nung-shao hao-chuan hsu-ti k'u ti k'u: chineseeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

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iulangi-isanamk kakaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa poho-amatersu-susa-no-o-tsuki-yumi-osa no o mikoto amatsu-hiko-ho-no-bubugi-mikoto-taka-mi-musubi-no-miko n i h o n j A ashanti-zulu-congo-xohas+heyenne-arapaho-sioux-kiowa walapai-pomo-hopi-navaj o-pit river-paiute-chinook-yarokkarok-hupa-mohawk-alcatrapmayan-yucatan-aztec-zapoteca-la razaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

Flaming navahcuvapahofish rituals sing out o our ancestral bowels,from kalingaf igorote skins, from nigrito sky-river spirits,from the burning castration of magellan,from santa cruz cockfights,from tino's barbershop to international manongs,from a thousand dalits 8 ugsa 8 laman 6 Kabunian b bangan b lumawig 8 canaos b tumungaws 8 mang-mangk 8 tolibilbayan 8 an-antipakao 8 the pakde ceremony 8 to the ifusao medicineman 8 to the biko woman with a magdagaret basket of sweet coconut rice-history 8 tales of the manongs 8 the brown feet ofchildren in the south of market street 8 to their spirit that swirls round a thousand ricefields 8 playgrounds o America 8 to the f clapping of kayaomung@hands6 snapping ifuga+forestfingers 6 to the yellow-brownblack-red breaking loose in the kearny street wind 8 to thefishheads in the pilipino sky b to the tribal spirits waiting to return to the ancestral bellies &from siouxghost chants 8 sun dances, from blazing kayaomunggi suns bursting infoa basket offishnets 8 to the nihonmachi issei 8 to the lo yun 8 to ifupo bells 8 gongs Sfiom tibetan horns screaming khamandhu mountains to bend-we celebrate our poetry falling likea thousand tribal rains 8 singing a hundred thousand songs 8 thru l raza machetes 8 sapao bolos-cuta ting the moon of civilization in hay: we come out of tule-manzunar concentration camps my lai-golden chinatown mountainswatt~wounded knee-kearny stree-mission street barrios-singing our poetry.
the long night sitting alone eating fish listening t o mandolin strings o the old manongs f they came only t change their lives o where are they n o w ? international hotel passing an empty hole

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here on kearny street on jackson street where a whiteman in the past waited in his truck to bring pilipinos to salinas here on kearny street memories so deep still can hear the cries wailing inside of me never leaving cuts so deep like a bolo i see their faces espiritu felix agnes osorio llamera before they carried so much rice & pig head in the rain here now on kearny street a place called manilatown is still alive with songs echoinglives changing like the wind we move on to other things: sit down with us and eat; listen to our poetry: we rise taller than redwoods.

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But I never stop just there-walking past them. For this space is sacred, a sacred burial ground of the manongs. Twelve years later the I-Hotel remains. The ancestral remnant of the past haunts my mind like tribal ifigao ghosts. So I am still here in Manilatown, a tribal link to the past-existing for so long as the rains fill my mind with song, music, and poetry. I have created a Manilatown senior center for the manongs, so to speak, to call their home, to speak to their hearts and minds, and to let their spirits run wild into the Kearny Street wind. When all is quiet in their rooms, we stand close protecting them. The manongs are still here, though others have passed on, we continue to the day-in and day-out struggle. But we walk on. We continue to create our own poetry, to create a poetical world for them, a world that will take care of their needs. Asian American poetry will live on in their lives in the Nihonmachis, Chinatowns, and Manilatowns of America. We create in their vision the songs and poetry of their life. But I feel like a waterbuffalo, salivating molten lava, ploughing up the sacred fields and mountains of Chinatowns, J-Towns, and Manilatowns. I have grown up in the ghettos of wailing cries and bursting dreams-through our people we learn how they have suffered; we learn from the first that came. And as a poet I sing their songs to the wind, to a thousand bursting suns, until we can all sit down and enjoy life with a bowl of rice and fish. We need not look any farther than in their eyes. Right there! Right here! Cant you see it?
i have lived so far so much knowing their lives living in the same rooms as small as tea pots

in j-town in Chinatown in manilatown the old flats converted broken up into individual rooms tiny kitchens.. . concentrationcamps after the war they came back home in the sadness of a thousand winter snows they can fill

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a hundred thousand snowcrane diaries deep scars in their hearts torn spirits yet and yet the songs, the dreams are still alive poems of a thousand autumn leaves nihonmachi the karita-sans the kume-sans the sato-sans how i remember them in my childhood days how i remember them now j-town manilatown Chinatown. ..is my life. and in j-towns i knew them al l

the old, the young the comer grocer heavy rain poems waka tanka poems break loose in the nihonmachi wind next door to pilipino town pilipino barbershops sitting there on a little stool how i remember having my hair cut the sound of my youth & the chattering of pinoys in the background and the fresh smell of manju coming from Benkyodo's pastry shop buchanan & geary street crismossing my mind

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street traveling from manju to daikon to bancha to bop aty listening to "there'll never be another you" to manilatown & back again to Chinatown all over again inside every roomstrong smell of incense facing a brick building old hands in mine a thousand flowers
in the streets the bloods ran fightingagainst white boys up the hill downhill in the marina & northbeach when all was white

fell over
a large pig

next door to the iloilo center the circle of brown on buchanan & ellis street down the block from fillmore two blocks from j-town a hidden backyard pilipino ritual where a whiteman's eyes never touched gone forever passed away in the forgotten dreams kept alive in a poem and the streets crowded with blacks

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remembering when i was only 10 years old the erection o all day thinking f stretched block after block the prostitutes one story high i was only 10 years old knew them all by their first name every face & dimple creased my mind terry, the madam asked, how my mama was as the shades were pulled down & a whiteman ran upstairslooking back fillmore o my youth. f But the main theme was poetry. To celebrate through poetry, the lives of Asian American senior citizens. The Asian American poets were close to the black poets as they were close to the Chicanos and Native American Indians. It was a very creative period for Asian American poets. We were all drawn together by a common bond-brothers and sisters under the same skin, fighting against the oppression of Third World people. I remember Richard Oakes, the Mohawk Native American Indian. He was sitting behind a large glass of beer looking at some poets in the Precita Club, near Bernal Heights. When we started to read, he approached me and asked if he could read something. I told him it was fine with me. I remember his lines so clearly. "You know the color of oppression. You know who you are.. .you're out there." This brought a clear picture of the whiteman and what he represents. Somehow,if we were to ask, how does poetry come alive? Where does it come from? We may safely say that poetry comes alive when the poet breathes into it-when it becomes part of his blood, his eyes, when all that is inside of him is brought alive in one word, or a single line. So poetry comes alive when it touches you-when the feeling is so intense that you are no longer thinking of the lines. That particular moment can bring about a quick change in one's life-when the poet and the listener become one. But then, from where does poetry originate? It comes from the heart. When all of us wrote poetry then, it was the changing of times. It is true what Russell Leong said of the Vietnam War, and the political struggles in all Third World countries. Had it not been for

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falo river-wind stories in Manilatown and can hold a hundred thousand locusts still-in flight, still as ice cold winter. . .the Issei, they can tell tales of Nihonmachidreams in mountains of all night sushi, where Bush Street Konko bells echo sad memoriesof Tulelakeas cherry blossomsfallfrom the sky. And you a n hear them reach outforfloating salmon in the sky, then watch what happens: a hand reaches out and suddenlylssei faces appear like soft uji moss,swaying with songs and cries: nihonmachiiiii. Daikon journals ferment. Tokomo-silence. Tule-Manzanar concentration camps. Kakemono-barbwirecries deep in hara rock gardens. Amida Buddha nightmares. The Amo, who can chant rain stories of angel rock prisons of blood sweat and tearschant all day under a tree in portsmouth square, of Sierra wind-mountain tales and golden mountain-rivers of steel tracks-chinatowns of America stretchfrom coast to wast,from Trinity country to siskiyu mountains,from locke car$ to King Street, Seattle, fromstockton to S.E hidden cobblestone alleyways, from canton to faitfield: George Leong, Russell Leong, Kitty Tsui, Nellie Wong, Curtis Choy, Merle Woo, Nancy Hom, WingTek Lum-lo yun rise likea thousand winter storms. Steel rails whip round golden mountains. blood &sweat and tearsflow deep two centuries back-yangtiz rivermemories sink deep. backbreaking in the sacramento-san jouquin delta. thick, long braids swing 8 stretch in the sierra jagged-mountain winds-whipping the white snow where chinamen lay buried-screamsfrom chinatown dragons burn. . .flyfrom china camps, from angel island,flyhomecalif: chinatown-leaping withfire r a m sharp sharkfins. canton visions.

the war, the racism, the oppression of our people, we would not have had any reason to belong, to be drawn together as one tribal family. But we must remember that we also wrote of our loves, our rituals, our lonelinessin the farms, mountains, cities, barrios and countrysides. But the poet is also a storyteller in that he speaks through the eyes and ears and tongues, minds and spirits of his people, letting %" takes its natural course. And so who are the storytellers? The manongs-they can tell a thousand water buf-

How one creates a poem is as interesting as the spaces in one's life. We may not wish to dwell in such intellectual matters. But what serves as a framework for poetry should be quickly destroyed. To understand tribal poetry, we must leave the whiteman behind. He cannot understand us, nor should he even try. Our tribal poetry, if one can call it that stems from the fact that we draw from our own culture. Our memories, our culture, serve us well. The best part of our poetry is our struggle, and the best part of our struggle is our poetry. We have a personal responsibility to our people, and a commitment to strengthen the world they live in, by creating somethingnew-through poetry.

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1 have lived in the Manilatowns, Chinatowns, and ]-Towns of America, in the ghettos of bop city dreams, and soulsville loneliness 6 Fillmore Street blues crying the blues o Big Mama Thornton-Bop city-listening to "All the ThingsYou Are." I knew every f black, brown, yellow, red face.

Sometimes my heart is Japanese Sometimesmy heart is Chinese Sometimesmy heart is Japanese and Chinese at the same time Sometimes my mind is Japanese Sometimesmy mind is Chinese Sometimes my mind is Japanese and Chinese at the same time Sometimes my belly is Japanese Sometimes my belly is Chinese Sometimesmy belly is Japanese and Chinese at the same time Sometimes my heart is Hopi Sometimes my heart is Navajo Sometimes my heart is Hopi and Navajo at the same time. Sometimes my heart is Black Sometimes my heart is Chicano Sometimes my heart is Black and Chicano at the same time Sometimes my mind is Black Sometimesmy mind is Chicano Sometimes my mind is Black and Chicano at the same time Sometimes my belly is Black Sometimes my belly is Chicano Sometimes my belly is Black and Chicano at the same time. Sometimes my belly is Navajo Sometimes my belly is Hopi Sometimes my belly is Hopi and Navajo at the same time Sometimes my belly embraces a l things l Swallowing black, brown, yellow, red belching up poems Sometimesi am a water buffalo-

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my t i wind-snapping al in the four corners o the world. f

We have become brothers and sisters. We gathered with Chicanos, Blacks, Japanese, Native American Indians, addressing certain political issues that affect the lives not only of our people but all Third World folks. We have come together, not only for a common cause, not only through culture but through poetry. It was so imminent then-and now I am reminded again and again in a poem: Soon the white snow will melt and the black, brown, yellow, red earth will come back to life Soon the white snow will melt. While living and working in our little, tiny communities,in the midst of tower-

ing highrises, we fought the oppressor, the landlord, the developer, the banks,
City Hall. But most of all, we celebrated through our culture; music, dance, song and poetry-not only the best we knew but the best we had. The poets were always and have been an integral part of the community. It was through poetrythrough a poetical vision to live out the ritual in dignity as human beings. And up on the hill they came, the Sioux Indians, from South Dakota, at the Grace Cathedral Church, not too far from Chinatown or Manilatown, where Dennis Banks arrived for the longest poetry walk, sharing with the plight and struggle of Wounded Knee:
A Thunder Being Nation i am, i have said A Thunder Being Nation i am, i have said you shall live you shall live you shall live you shall live Listen to the cries of Wounded Knee Listen to the cries o Wounded Knee f come rescue your people grab their naked bodies with a thousand summer buffalo skin

The pounding drums echoed closer and closer to home-through Nob Hill, like ancient Sioux gods and spirits breaking loose in the wind. Here on the hill was the longest walk of Wounded Knee-the longest walk of our lives with the Sioux Indians:

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wounded knee coming home to manilatown to Chinatown to j-town al over again l

So through the neighborhoods of tribal folks, in one way, it nurtured my vision, my attitude, my songs, and my poetry. I have never felt that culture was a source of isolation, nor did I feel that it was one-sided or non-meaningful. Its meaning was never described or explained to me. There was actually no need to explain it, anyway. This was beyond my understanding. I lived in a community, neighborhood, a barrio of mixed blood, where feelings were woven out of love and sharing. What is understood by Asian American poets. What is culture, in one way, did not enter my mind. It was not intellectual. We did not have to understand it, it was enough just to live it-live out the ritual, the celebration, if you will, the ceremony of our life through poetry in America. The pig celebration my brother, Russell, created in the South of Market Cultural Center, was created for the purpose of keeping the ritual alive. And now a poetical feeling has been woven from an ifusao tribal fabric-creating something new and alive.
yeUow/brown black/red i die, yeti rise but one learns only if one lets go of everything and goes on to unlearn & unlearn what one has learned. from ten thousand carabao tules

Welive our poetry in the lives of the manong, the issei, and the elderly Chinese. But we are careful and alerf that we do not wallm in OUT own selfihness and greed and become like the whiteman, lost in the whitemans carpsociety, losing everything,even our own identity, our culture, our poetry-we become white. Weget too comfortable in our community,siftingbehind a desk towering over our jaguar, mermdes,and bmw. Weget so comfmtablein our classrooms, in our universitiesand institutions. Weno longer create or change-to beanything or anyone. Weare no longer concerned with the oppressed, the plight of our people. Moreover, I do not see myself as a critic of Asian American poetry and culture
but as a poet who draws upon two views and no views-one view that sees the

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birth of Asian American poetry, and how it came about, and the other view that sees it coming full circle. The view of no views, if you will, may dwell on how far we have gone. And by rebirth, I mean from its lifelessness, a coming back to life, coming back from death-rising as it were to something new-to a new dawn (like a frozen dead snowcrane that suddenly comes back to life-spreading its wings across the four pillow worlds of black, brown, yellow, red. ..touchingeverything all at once: north, south, east, west.) We have already arrived, creating our own place, barrio, Agbayani Village. Henceforth we are creating our own destiny, instead of accepting the world as it is arranged; we come with a vision rearranging our own lives, rearranging the world, in the community-creating a new world through poetry. Our hearts, minds, and spirits are not confined or locked up in some institution or sealed inside a marble coffin. Actually a poem has nothing to do with the poetical feeling unless it is brought to life. The poem is best understood by not understanding it, not grabbing it with your intellect, and dissecting it until nothing is felt. For what is said is not actually what is felt. But it is precisely the nopoem that is significanthere. When we bring a poem to life, give it life, the poet actually creates it, breathes into it. When I say the rice grains pass through my fingers like a thousand water buffaloes, I mean exactly that. What seems nonsensical, or is nothing at all, may have a deeper meaning because of its utter stupidity or emptiness. The sound of ones life in a poem cannot be described but felt. Once again, when a woman cries out in the early morning, the sound of her voice can sweep the mind through a thousand seasons. But it is clearly stated that a poem is best understood by listening-only if the poet and listener are one. who cares for such trivial dead tales and forgotten wrinkled ways anaent lives bones
brittle cracked aching for
memories of old

wildflowers in walnut grove

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salinas watsonville Chinatowns j-towns manilatowns children over brown-yellow grass are gone but now the dreams cut in half alone & forgotten who they are no more respect no need to bother with the old way it brings you down way down old iron pots & pans run with grease smell of fish & pig old mildew rags pile of dust in the fields stains of the past labored in the valleys concentration camps watsonde ros it hawaii sugarcane manongs scars so deep like a rake garden a poem deeper than all the oceans can contain (bring back alive the laughter from pain) they sit

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in a small room a few flowers

on the windowsill tea in a pot chattering in the hallwaya toilet flushes fish smells in the kitchen
d%@ng

the wind-tales down a long, narrow path all the chatter of sad rain o my people. f

canfill a mountain journal

Henceforth we all came from the same place: a community, a barrio, a village. Strictly speaking, however, we had come for a large pig to celebrate our poetry. "Huh?" replied the white farmer. "DOyou know what a poem is? Do you know what a ritual is?" "No, I don't,'' said the farmer. "It is a poem." So we step out of our culture and backagain-to create. Suffice to say, it is what Russell Leong says of poetry-that some wrote in prisons and bars. Those, therefore, not only wrote from their personal experiencebut followed their own way until the very end. To write poetry is to live again-and it is precisely this love of beauty that speaks deeply in us. And, in a way, I do not see beauty and revolution as separate entitie-nor do I see love and politics as separate. As a poet I have been involved in social change o for s long, I feel like a hundred years oId. Therefore, if nothing changes it dies; it becomes monotonous and boring. It dies because of isolation. How, then do I think of Asian American poets? I think of the poet as a storyteller. I have always thought of the poet as a storyteller, anyway-transmitting tribal ways, tales, stories, songs and myths. Tribal visions and rituals seem to go beyond ordinary minds, but in reality they stem from the most primitive and most ordinary in nature. The mnong, the Issei, and the lo yun live through our poetry. Yet the storyteller is one who transmits from mind to mind, brown to brown, yellow to yellow, black to black, red to red. And from the Luzon forest to Frisco blondies curling their hair in the boxing ring of America.

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Before coconut dreamsflowfrom carabao skulls, listen to the ifusao visions ruttle in your hands. Theyare sacred. Do not wait. Taste them, like the Luwn spring leaves bending to touch the passing river. Agbayani Villagesunset. Flyingfish in ancient eyes of kalinga breasts. Thrust the bambooflutebetween your thick brown lips. Blow munbuno tales into the manilatown wind. See your face in the ifugao mountains. Get drunk with the "basi of your people" at the international hotel. Lorca, Lorca, Lorca. . .rough as the Batangas waves. Youa n hardly see out of your e eyes. One can only guess what one sees or what onefeels. Yt 1can feel the tuba riverflow fromyour hands into mine-pointing to where the sound is comingfrom:bata-bata-batabata-bata-bata ka ba-keep the"skinof your f i f ealive. Thevisionis in your hands. "Bata, 1 cannot see."
manilatown carabaefishtailupriver-downriver uphill-downhill round steep northern California coastal ridges whipping clear round snowbound brown minds. wandering north-southeast-west inside a salmon belly with kayaomunggieyes tasting the eggs like volcanic ifugao myths & dreams in the wind. winter knotted & gnarled brown hands kearny street rain. alaska snowstorm:brown, brown, brown frozen tribal dreams inside a manong's mouth &git tribes crawled inside. snowbending. rice bending fish swimming in kearny street pool halls. scales of two brown people meeting in one world.

I would like to confine my comments to lkounds of one's life" in poetry-how poetry affects one's life. Long ago a manongnamed Ricardo Cayabyab told me an interesting story about when he was a child in the Philippines. He said he was awakened early one morning by the sound of an eagle flapping its wings in the far, far distant sky. .so far and yet so near, he was moved by the sound. In some northern mountain province, so remote and isolated that one could hear every single sound. And yet he was moved by another sound-the sound of an old woman grinding corn. She was chanting. The sound of her voice could move a thousand mountains-shook his mind loose. His spirit took flight to America, in Montana snowbound box-car dreams. Back to a little place called Manilatown near Chinatown-where fish, pig, chicken adobo and rice spread the landscape of Keamy Street. I asked manong Cayabyab, how he was able to survive in America? He said, 'Do you hear that sound?"

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And in a way, we need to twist this a bit. Turn it upside down, inside out. We should not be confined by literary form, which is to say, the best way to understand form is to destroy it. Our generation of Asian American poets is one of many voices. Thus, our poetic songs came from a deep reservoir inside each of us. They were our poetical cries. We were not only singing with anger but with love; we were singing for social change, revolutionary change, of all oppressed Third World people. And it was coming to light, our tribal poetry, as I recalled when we all converged on a little whiteman's pig farm, in Sonoma with Pilipinos, Blacks, Samoans, Chicanos, Chinese and Japanese. It was Buriel Clay, a black poet, who pulled on the pig's entrails-dangling it, stretching it far. ..and my brother stretched it even more in the Sonoma wind. Dangling like a loose poem in the earth. Running water over it, through it, like a river, clearing out the dead past, while the white farmer shouted obscenities at us. And said, "whereyou folks from?" We come for poetry for our people. And exactly what is it that we need to do. First of all, we are not white missionarieswho have come to save our own soulsnothing like that. Those days are gone, but the scars the missionariesleft on Third World people cannot be wiped away, erased-nor can the oppression and the enslavementby the white traders be forgotten. We need to realize that life is also beautiful, and through poetry we can see ourselves as we really are-not a whiteman's version. Perhaps the only meaningful thing in life is poetry. We need to create a better life for our people. T tell the truth, we must be more than mere poets; we must stand up for the o rights of our people-against the injustices brought upon them. But certainly we are poets, first and foremost. The Asian poet seems more appropriate to me than Asian American poet. For the American part is a member of this white society, which I am against. So where do we belong? In the mainstream of white people? If we do not save our lives, our community, our culture, our identity, our tribe;we die. I we belong to a segment of society, what segment do we belong to, anyway? f For it never entered our minds. What is contained in our culture, in our community, is "too precious for society." And what exactly is recorded in history? It certainlybelongs to our hearts-only to those who have suffered. It is true, however, we always wanted to live our lives as human beings. Thus we were at home with our own kinds. "Talkof our life in n a t u r e A i l y to be shown matter, to come in contact with it-rocks, trees, wind on our cheeks! the solid earth, theactual world! the m m o n sense! Contact! Contact! Who are we? Whereare we?" Well, who can tell us o our Own culture? Who can felfus of the drama o our communities? Hence we are f f

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like human beings, whatever the cost, whatever the dreams. So, what is our dream? to liberate our people together- strong poetical voice, present and waiting to break loose. As poets, our poetry was to give "spiritual strength to our people.'' On the other hand, what exactly makes the community so important to us. . .is the fact that we draw our sustenancefiom our culture. Indeed, the voice of the poet comes forth dressed in the rags of his peoplesmelling of fishtails and water buffalo hide. You see, I have walked so long with my people and listened to the "sound of their lives." How else could I remember what they said to me, had I not sat down with them? Across the street from the Royal Hotel where a manong's mandolin cries outwhere manongasoria and espiritu are laid out on the bed-rain-soaked rags. ..and the crunching sound of pig ears caught between carabao teeth. Two blocks from the International Hotel and next door to Manilatown and close enough to hear manong Ricardo Cayabyab cough up blood, splattering it on a white canvass of his life. Asking him, one day, how he was able to live, struggle in America, in Delano, Agbayani Village. Looking at his eyes that spread like the Pasig river. "One day I heard a sound coming from an old woman grinding corn, chanting in the far distance. No matter how silent, we go forth Montana snowbound boxcar dreams-listening to the steel wheels spin round and round. Do you hear that sound?" So how did manong Gallo find his way here, in a small room, forty years ago? A tribal spirit inside a wood frame, dressed in a tailored macintosh suit. You can hear songs: memory, memory, memory. Nothing but memories. Yet, this manong and friend, a brother, a father, a tribal link, the ancestral remnant to the past. ..strutsdown Manilatown in such tribal elegance-and the unfinishedness of his life has just begun. He said, while sitting in his small room measuring the rice with his eyes. "Donot be ashamed, for you nakedness is natural; eat, eat with me. Your hands-the rice; it tastes better." A sound never heard before, so pure. Nothing's said. But then, you see, he turns to me and says, "I saw this woman in the sky, and she said I was the boy of the forest, the mountain, the animals. ..please protect them. .please take care of them." I asked him how he came to America, to this place called Manilatown? And he turned and pointed to the blank wall and said, "One day I climbed the tallest coconut tree to the moon and kissed the moon. And the moon said, Where do you want to be?' So I looked down below and saw the ocean. And I said,

not solitaryfigures, we cry out forfieedm and social change. Do we seekglory? For the poverty of our life is so long overdue. Therevolt in our hearts is pure. . .we wanted to live

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'Dagat, ocean, someday I am going to cross over you and see the other side of your face.' And suddenly all the coconuts fell from the sky, so here I am." the sound of their feet treading in a thousand directions, like carabaos alonga riverflowingacross Manilatown. ..by their oppression, I cry out through my poetry, weaving out, in ritual, celebration, a tribal feast. 1cry out the sound of their life-fish xales scattered likepast dreams, and 1gather them up one by one, decipher them in the rain-river of ifugao s o n p t a s t i n g the sweet coconut visionsfrom watsonvilletofigueroa to imperial valley to Guadalupe, Calif. How far do 1go as a poet? 1gofar-stretching my mind in water buffalo skin and raftzingbones, bringing me back to who 1am-bothfishtail and cue stick 6 guitar strings echoing-wandering, living their life in my poems, in a handful of rice kept alive inside a wild pig. wild wrinkled Guadalupefaces creased in the burning sun. However, as we go a step further, do we not in fact unlearn all what we have
learned by listening to new sounds, by not anticipatingor expectinganything but letting '5t" flow with life? But we go farther outside, if we discover that our life is more poetical, more or less, by viewing things differently. We need to be careful not to wallow in our own selfishness and greed. We become like the whiteman, lost in a white cargo society; we do not budge. We no longer create or change. We no longer care for the oppressed. We are no longer disturbed or angered at the injusticethrust upon Third World people because we have attained a position in society. Because we do not demonstrate, we do not create. We merely die. We are like zombies of a white society. The legacy of Joaquin Legaspi, Mariano Bayani, Serafin Syquia, Edward Badajos, and Francis O a should not be forgotten, dismissed, rejected or shuffled k aside to collect dust-nor should it be buried in the dark-nor should it remain silent. The epitaph should not read: "Times are Changing." We are concerned with getting on with our lives, to accumulate what we desire-what we deserve. Who knows best but those who have struggled and suffered? We deserve more. Yet, what is our share as Asian American poets? Our culture has been castrated a thousand times round. We need to create a better life through our writing, through our literature. We need to create poetry and bring it into the lives of our people. The only meaningful thing in our life is to create. The only true thing in our life is poetry. Mountain-stirring salmon caught in the streets of America. Poetry walks the streets of Manilatown, Chinatown, J-Town. Culture wrapped in banana leaves, in loincloths and macintosh rags. I have not given up the bozo or the fish or the water buffalo. But the manonglives like a Can you not hear the coconuts fall? lfind brown faces ofthe manongs treading mrrow paths ofAmerica. I am afected by

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bird. He hunted back then. So let the manongs who are dying in the wooden shacks of America, Tenderloin, 6th Street, Manilatown rise up one more time. Let them taste the smoked salmon over rice-the h p n still smells strong in the wind. Let them rise for a better life, dancing gracefully away from the whiteman who taught him so well to be enslaved.
manong the clearing on the mountain slope is ready, and the kugon grass is thick round your body swallow seven stars it's time now for me to cut the grass round your body trap wild pigs & lay down your bolo in a basket of rice squat on the floor balance your mind on heels listening to the tinkling of bells and of brass amulets, and the beating of gongs. pour coconut oil over our hair rub down the body hard pin-stripe macintosh suits cling to hot brown bodies rise up on heels and toes bend the knees twist the body & circle round the gongs dance in the small rooms manong the rice is ready come out of your room let the ifugao women cook bangkodo over little fires, balancing pots sunk in a bed of tribal ashes.

Asian American poetry-what is missing? Nothing. Perhaps everything has already been said. Everything is out in the open. Our anger has not subsided-has not become subtle. We were angry back then, and now we have come to a fruition in our poetry, a peaceful cwxistence with our brothers and sisters. But I think we need to get angrier, not to retire into some comfortablebackroom studio out in the country-dreaminglife away. How

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wonderful it is now to gaze at the stars, while everythingin life, the suffererspass us by. The Third World struggle at State College and the struggle of the International Hotel, and the racism, and the Vietnam War, are tantamount to forging a new vision-to be angry for social change. How comfortable should we be, now, in the Asian American Studies department and Ethnic Studies? Should we bury ourselves up in the classrooms, wrap ourselves up with paperwork and call it quits because we have finally acquired teaching jobs? We must always be alert and continue to foster the need for change-social change, education, but most of all to create poetry, to strive for creativity. The institutions can be a dying breed left in some decadent age. They provide nothing but monographs, etc. But we need them anyway like we need the whiteman, white king powder soap. As Asian American poets, it was essential to dwell on our identity, to feel the need to find out who we are. This was not just mere talk. This has been the stepping stone of Asian American poetry. Yet, however, no matter how brown, black, yellow or red we are-whether we like it or not, we should live as one tribal family, not dividing the communities of poets running amok. The farthest the poet can see may go beyond a thousand Navajo sunsets. What we have seen before is no longer the same. We see differently, because we are different. Our poetical world and feeling are different, nurtured with layers and layers of carabao skin, snowcrane wings, shark fins and bamboo. What is the range of our vision? What is our range as Asian American poets? We see only as far as our expressionin life. If we cannot see the face across the street on the other side, we will breed our own isolation. We go forth, walking the Chinatown streets, listening to stories of the old who struggled in America, thrown onto Angel Island, caged on rock behind bars, sucking up the loneliness and the suffering of their life on the walls-the poetry so deep, SD moving-carved out of their own blood and tears-their bitterness, their loneliness, their wailing spirits echoing throughout the bay, forever sacred speaks to us, in such fog-moaning t o n e k e s out to be heard-cries out for the injustice. And we tread through walnut groves and stockton, and in agbayani village of the manongs-brown feetjcnottedfrom the toil-their burnt brown skin etched in the burning landscape. . .cominghere so long ago in thefarms of calij-my brown people--how i love them, in their laughter and in their silence, and in the lonely wood shacks stretched from watsonville to lompoc, salinas; I heard them so clearly-their bodies, their minds aching, bending, their spirit heavy as a hundred ifupo mountai-the forgotten brown people. . .now I hear the cock croaking and see all of them treading over grass while the frogs leap toward the sunset-they carry themselves toward the sun,ready to sit down

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and eat rice andfish. But we must go further, in the truest sense of the word, Itinthe truest sense of things,"-further than the warped anthropologist. We cannot allow the anthropologist, the sociologistor the researcher to dig deep into our hearts, minds, and spirits, and make out of it a kind of "utilitarian aim." The Asian American poets cannot afford to be White. We have been baffling to untie ourselves from this knot for a long time. We become close to our community when we forget who we are. Do we not see ourselves better in this way? But we must create poetry day by day. We revise best away from revision, and we write best away from ourselves. When all that is left back home is taken outside and brought back anew. "A day or two surveying is equal to a journey." But a journey into a poetry is equal to treading through four seasons in one step. But let me ask the question: how few of the Asian American poets are aware of other things?
how few are aware that i winter, when the earth is covered with snow and n ice. ..the sunset sky is double. the winter is coming i shall walk the sky. ..there is an annual light i the darkness of the winter night. n

Have Asian American poets listened to other sounds in life? And we must go further-learning, relearning, unlearning the processes of what is outside-nature. There are trees in the communities, in the barrio. There are flowers. The grass in winter is wet. And in autumn everything turns golden-yellow and red. What makes it that way? We need to follow the tree and listen to what it says to We must walk with it, saunter; we must take it as it is, as it comes along, as it moves, as it plunges deep, as it stalks after its prey from high up, "read it slowly over a period of time, and read consecutively." We must not turn our back from the community, from our tribal family, our ancestral link. Henceforth, we must make great effort. All this insufferable routine speaks deeply to us. But we rise up in the morning. Put on our clothes. Wash our faces. Meet the day. Though each of us may follow different paths, and need to make a living-ur brothers, the Navajos, the Hopis, the Apaches, the Pomos (all of them linkwith Asians),and it is this tribal link to mother earth that we share together. We must remember that the uranium was stolen from the Sacred Land of the Hopis and Navajos to kill and destroy an Asian country of mothers, fathers, and children. How ironic! Our tribal family is more than just across the way; they are brothers and sisters under the same skin; they cross their blood with ours-the plight and struggle.
US.

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They are not a mere historical picture in some phoney two-bit Hollywood movie. No! For the Native American Indians, the Chicanos, and the Blacks all speak to us as brothers under the same skin-keen observers, sufferers; for we must not lose sight or forget it was through them, knowing "their association makes a differenceto the outcome of their lives." What is the commitmentof Asian American poets-to create, foremost. ..a family tribal connection. The most important force of Asian American poets is "not merely how he gets a living, but how he decides about the uses of his time when he is not writing." If I do not go off outside myself, sauntering say through Walnut Grove, Locke, Watsonville and Salinas, Manilatown, J-Town, and Chinatown, then I no longer can see my people. The Asian American poets must "give yourself wholly to it." Our experience is like a mad river surging forth in winter. When covered thick in snow-melting in summer-we see all over again. Yes! We see all over again with new eyes, so it seems. Recording the lives of Third World people is one thing-to survive is another. So we must embrace all those who came first, that suffered: the Issei, the Chinese, the mnongs, along with the Blacks, the Chicanos, the Vietnamese, the Koreans, the Native American Indians, all Third World people. We all share the same commitmentsto our people. We must always return to the things that make us belong, so that we can break away and come back fresh. We return to a new sense of things. So what is the best in Asian American poetry? What so touches us most, at this time, at this moment, in history, dreams, or myths and songs. And so, what does the Asian poet lack? Each one has to find it in his own way-"to learn his own discipline," and "to learn to live with what he lacks." But how should one know the poverty of one's poetry except by being poor in mind, by stepping outside of oneself. If we are not kept moving, creating, we become dull; we die of boredom, of creating nothing but repetitious nonsense. What is the purposeless purpose of Asian American poets? It seems to me it is not only to listen to the stories of the old but to sit still and have a bowl of rice and fish with them. You are in the company of your people. You are in the company of sacred lives, who have lived a thousand times, filling every surging river. So we must alwaysbe in their company, to learn what it means to suffer. And the lesson they teach us is clear: "we must always be in the company of the poor, the oppressed, the lonely-to bring us closer to the reality of ourselves. ..in the tribal company of brown, black, red, and yellow brothers and sisters under the same skin." W come close through a sense of respect and openness, and in the presence e

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of our own people we become one tribal family. But I must speak as though I have only a few seconds to live. If the children of the rainbow can speak to us of the woods in winter, of the rains and snows, of the sadness of autumn, of the chilly winds in Harlem, of the smell of plum sauce dripping from the old in Chinatown, of the old Pilipino men whose bodies smellslike a hundred water buffaloes soaked in the Kearny Street mud, then we should lend an ear and listen to them. For those who speak. ..speak like a poem. And so, how do we arrive at a picture of the community? And most importantly, how do we see the world? By making it our own-by creating poetry through tribal dreams and tales. We celebrate our freedom through Asian American poetry.

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