The Game of 100 Ghosts Read online

  THE GAME OF 100 GHOSTS

  Hyaku Monogatari Kwaidan-kai

  poems

  Terry Watada

  ©2014 Terry Watada

  Except for purposes of review, no part of this book may be reproduced

  in any form without prior permission of the publisher.

  We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts

  for our publishing program. We also acknowledge support from the

  Government of Ontario through the Ontario Arts Council.

  We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of

  Canada through the Canada Book Fund for our publishing activities.

  Cover photography and design by Peggy Stockdale

  Cataloguing data available from Library and Archives Canada

  Watada, Terry, author

  The game of 100 ghosts / Terry Watada.

  Poems.

  ISBN 978-1-927494-58-5 (ebook)

  TSAR Publications

  P. O. Box 6996, Station A

  Toronto, Ontario M5W 1X7

  Canada

  www.tsarbooks.com

  Contents

  A Game of Ghosts

  The Day After He Died

  The Silent Mouths of Rain

  impermanence

  Prairie Luminescence

  August Light

  By a Chinese Lamp

  Down a Country Road

  A House of Crying Women

  kiyooka airs

  Come With Me

  Last Dream

  a last dream:

  the last dream:

  The Dinner

  virgin moon

  A Silent Rain

  Suicide City

  Lisa

  Nighthawks

  The Heart

  those were the days of roses, of poetry & prose and

  Closin’ Time at the 5 & Dime

  The Game Nears Its End

  Vanishing Point

  Playing Pool

  Babies in the River

  A Period of Glowing Life and [Happy]-ness

  while listening to Van Morrison

  The Vanishing Point

  A Visitation

  Glossary

  for my brother Hideki,

  Mike Shin, as good a brother as I’ve ever known,

  and my son “Bunji”, who loved both his uncles

  A Game of Ghosts

  night

  crept like

  smoke in a forest fire

  at sundown

  the evening

  settled and everyone sat

  in

  a circle

  around

  a circle of candles.

  in the brilliant

  splintering demise of

  the sun,

  the timid wax’d flames

  before the story-tellers

  flickered

  and sputtered

  feasting

  on air, awaiting

  the smoke-filled capsule-

  bodies of

  ghosts.

  tell the first story, tell

  the second,

  tell the one-

  hundredth

  extinguish each

  candle with each story until

  the remnant of the past

  re- turns

  and

  a last conversation

  (precious and true) takes place

  between the mouths of the grieving and sorrowful

  and

  the thoughts of the

  beloved dead secrets are

  revealed.

  The Day After He Died

  the morning after . . . sun-

  shafts

  dappled the walls

  with playful puddles

  of light

  i think i

  felt his

  presence the beauty

  of brotherly love danced

  on the walls through

  window

  panes

  and i laughed as he might have

  he was telling

  me he was fine happy that

  the pain, the thinning of

  legs

  and mind, was over.

  don’t worry,

  he said, don’t be sad just don’t be

  and

  then

  i remembered mom okachan

  coming to me,

  bedside

  the day after,

  and

  she smiled as she

  gently tickled and

  rubbed

  my back

  in a last gesture of motherhood

  no worry no

  cry i am all right

  and all was well when the light faded

  into the long evening & after-

  moon shadows

  The Silent Mouths of Rain

  at

  the striking of

  blue

  o’ clock

  when a flock of clouds

  muttoned to-

  gether at the denouement of

  evening, i

  listened

  to the mouths

  of rain

  rattling on

  incomprehensibly

  in a foreign tongue

  mutterings of a

  child-

  hood

  spent in a weeping storm

  banshee barking

  in

  the night

  ballet-weed newspapers

  flying

  flipping

  crinkling snapping

  ripping down alley-

  ways

  the sizzle of

  the steady rainstorm

  sub-

  siding into a drizzle

  and sputter of

  whisperings of

  long-ago dead

  abuse:

  ghosts speak

  but

  the mouths of rain remain silent

  impermanence

  the pain

  of

  dark places.

  I.

  4-room apartment with bath and kitchen

  on

  Powell Street, old Vancouver, 1937

  Mondays, mom went

  to sewing class

  I stayed home

  by myself

  I was four

  shadows grow into obake

  before

  his babyeyes

  chinese breathing in

  the back steam-laundry room pipes

  hiss and wizz

  with every press

  for money he shivers in the humidheat

  and

  darkness

  & he sits alone

  in Kono’s front room only one light burns

  quietly in a corner

  The seed of all crime is evil; the Shadow knows . . .

  a radio

  a lone companion in his murky fright

  Fukushima-san


  crashes

  into the apartment dropping

  the evilseed bottle of whiskey

  and

  stumbles into the bathroom

  I felt a duty

  & obedience rise

  to the surface

  with-in me

  I grabbed the bottle,

  ran to the toilet

  a room of ammonia stink and withered walls

  and offered the bottle

  to him

  My eyes beamed innocence a smile

  of helpfulness¸ innocence

  He grew so angry, he growled

  loudly like a ronin enraged

  and slapped my face

  I buckled and fell

  back

  to the floor,

  the whiskey spilled and stung,

  my red skin

  and eyes

  the light dims to unconsciousness:

  The Shadow knows . . .

  II. 1939

  midnight

  clatter

  the imagegames the

  mind plays

  Okasan tiptoed in-

  to

  the kitchen

  with me in tow the perfume of her

  night

  gown

  in my nose some comfort

  as obake rattle in the dark.

  a flick of the light cock-

  roaches feeding

  on the butter dish

  with exposure the onibugs

  scat-

  ter into dark places

  holes & wallcracks

  a boy squirms the

  eyes tingle

  Okasan brushed

  off the remaining magician

  insects down

  the drain

  and placed the butter dish in

  the icebox

  She

  turned to me and said,

  Mottanai, ne.

  III. 1942

  mom

  lies on a gurney

  in the hall outside the Vancouver

  waiting room of purgatory

  (dead

  to the world

  & so they hope)

  the nuns

  ink-bottles of

  compassion with

  only hate and indifference peering

  out from their habits at the enemyalien

  sweating with

  pain,

  death looms

  praying for deliverance for themselves,

  the sisters-of-mercy

  yet he sits in the Kawai cabin in Minto

  waiting

  to

  hear about otosan who had been

  crushed in a truckroll down

  a mountainside

  he waits wrapped in

  Kawai-san’s

  fragrant ( of compassion)

  dark arms of concern

  I heard them

  talking thru the walls

  late at night conspiring to

  give me away to the enemy

  Japanese;

  oka dead

  otosan dead of his injuries

  What else could they do?

  a ten-year-old boy’s eyes

  tremble

  while submerging in water

  as he did as a toddler,

  as a child, as a teenager, as a

  young

  man

  as a defeated man

  and gazing at an alien

  sun

  IV. the 1960s

  the absurdity of childhood memories

  he

  forgets them to survive

  to live with himself though

  the house of crying women

  reminds him every

  day every where every

  which way

  so he runs to

  blank obscurity until

  he

  bites on his lip

  holding in the pain and

  resolving to gaman

  in a moment of clarity, i hear my oniisan’s

  words

  of contempt, his choices . . . his failures

  You have to know what you want to be so

  you

  can’t

  sit on the fence forever

  choose . . . choose

  You’re in grade 10 for christ’s sake:

  doctor, lawyer, architect, engineer

  you need a 90 average

  to get into

  university

  Drop music,

  art,

  literature,

  take important subjects —

  they can be hobbies to make friends

  You don’t have to like what you’re doing

  just do it and so he betrays his own

  impulses, his own dreams

  V. 1984

  the hospital machines

  begin

  their countdown seconds

  remaining to oblivion

  for mom and he stands

  in-

  different to the im-

  plications

  It’s your choice

  let her go I’m fine with it.

  i can’t make that decision. not without you.

  Say goodbye & be done with it.

  his cold heart his negation of

  intimacy brotherly love

  the grief of

  life &

  death

  comes over me

  His boney hand at

  my shoulder i am

  a-

  lone again

  and i let mom go.

  But in that moment,

  he cries breaks down,

  bends over

  an old porcelain sink seeking

  comfort

  in the cold

  and impersonal

  i rub his shoulders saying,

  “it’s all right . . . it’s all right . . .”

  knowing it isn’t

  I have a brother again:

  compassionate, emotional,

  in his shuddering love

  if only for a time

  VI. 2012

  and in the days after he died

  on a cool, crisp morning

  i

  hear him

  in

  my half-sleep

  as clear as a

  woman’s ocean eyes deep

  water-black

  & unfathomable

  commanding me in his

  stern voice

  Just do it.

  just do it,

  so i will

  in the constant shift of impermanence.

  Prairie Luminescence

  About twenty miles

  south of Calgary,

  back

  in ‘46, she

  walked along

  a dirt road

  toward the vanishing point

  Her Eaton’s catalogue

  dress with a flower print

  flowed

  around her

  in a sad kind of way.

  the grime of

  her life

  adorned her face