Ravin’ Ragin’ Asians (Part II)
“Tufa at Mono Lake” by Noli Gracilla. @photos_by_noli, https://www.instagram.com/photos_by_noli/
Anthony Fauci, M.D., https://www.niaid.nih.gov/about/anthony-s-fauci-md-bio
“Trust Gap”
Who do you trust?
You do your research on Facebook, Reddit, Parler, etc…
Rabbit hole research takes twenty minutes –
you decide on your own protocols.
You hear about someone’s cousin’s friend, whose
balls swelled after getting a jab.
You make up your own mind because
you have done your own extensive research
and heard those stories about someone’s cousin’s friends.
How about the public servant and scientist with over 50 years’
research and practice?
Author of the canon of medicine,
our shepherd through the AIDS epidemic,
Swine flu, COVID-19 pandemics.
He risks his own life to care for Ebola patients.
Has he earned your trust yet?
He earns a dung heap of scorn and death threats.
Who do you trust with the truth?
Who do you trust with the facts?
Who do you trust to act?
“Magma”
Simmering underground at 2,000ºC
magma waits patiently
silently
for a sign.
Comet passing earth again after 20,000 years.
Locusts buzzing and covering all sky and land,
thick black smoke with millions of acres on fire
blotting out the sun,
turning day into dusk.
Watching from the ground we have no clue, the time of day.
We can barely see our own hands in front of us behind thick screens of locusts and the fug,
we cannot recognize mother,
her hair wrapped in a colorless scarf, her nose and mouth behind a mask,
only glittering eyes see everything and into our fear.
A plague created by man or passed from beasts
silently passes; invisible, invincible menace through the air,
striking down the hearty and the weak alike, by chance of bad luck.
Tectonic plates thousands of miles underground shift by millimeter, by millisecond,
until a perfect moment aligned
for magma to escape, erupt, to bring down
skyscrapers into a heap
suspension bridges broken in pieces on the sea floor.
Next a tsunami wipes out the coast
no humans and beasts left alive.
Only the sun is left blazing on a clear day.
"“Saving Malibu #2” by Anna Kelly, https://www.annatkelly.com/; currently on exhibit at Malibu City Hall. Photo by Anna Kelly.
Tyler Hicks/ The New York Times, https://www.nytimes.com/article/russia-invades-ukraine-photos.html
“Cannibals”
The great butchers of history:
Genghis Khan, Hitler, Stalin, and Mao
have astute students today.
Their students have learned from the examples well
throughout history, that sending your young to slaughter others’ young
will be met by wringing hands and appeasements (economic sanctions).
The best butchers act a little crazy but look just sane enough to tease along negotiations,
to hold out promises for peace-
maybe diplomacy will work its magic.
Above the talk, dangle hammers and scalpels.
Behind the talk, steady hands hold a moral compass, willing to wield scalpels and hammers.
David Guttenfelder for The New York Times, https://www.nytimes.com/article/russia-invades-ukraine-photos.html
Protesters on Santa Monica Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA, on Feb 26, 2022.
All photos by the poet, unless otherwise credited.
About the Ragin’ Ravin’ Asians collection.
Amy Peng is a multilingual multi-instrumentalist, songwriter in the multiverse. Ragin’ Ravin’ Asians forms her first collection of poems. As a dutiful immigrant, she has long deferred the artist’s path because, in the words of fellow Chinese immigrant and father of Jimmy O. Yang, “doing what you love is how you become homeless.” With degrees from Stanford University and University of California, Irvine, she has been working as a responsible professional and taking care of her family in Pasadena, CA. Beneath the veneer of respectable working mother rage a fierce feminist and social justice warrior. Her all-time favorite characters are Sun Wu-Kong 孫悟空, the Monkey King from Journey to the West 西遊記, and Marinus, the immortal physician and musician from David Mitchell’s multiverse. She is interested in building community via multimedia, interactive art facilitated by artificial intelligence/ machine learning. She is always looking for ways to combine food, music, and literature in her art projects.