A poem that simply defines truth not matter how hard it may come

gagaknives:

Sorry for the long wait! But my writing process is extremely slow…when I write, I let my words and ideas come to me, I try not to force them out, and I try to get as much as I can into one piece to make it feel really complete. But anyway. Here is my latest piece, just finished it a few minutes…

They say “Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it”

So it must be the case that he who writes history

Wanted a round two

Cause all I see when I watch the news
are headlines that match

the titles in my high school history text books

Worlds and War and Western thinking

run on repeat like broken records

Eurocentric Euphuisms like West expansion

Exploration, Manifest Destiny, and Spreading Democracy

tactfully translated from truth as
Slave trade, colonists, imperialism

Exploitation of all your natural resources and a bad excuse for US Military

Americans play red, white skin and blue superman savior mentalities

Third world nations being left with nothing

But pillaged lands, broken homes & false promises of American dreams

History textbooks are written like a

A bad version of Lord of the Rings
and I’ve been bored since the first book

and we haven’t even talked about world history

American Propaganda

Last year’s communist

Is this year’s terrorist

The blatant basatardizing of brothers of color

To beat them down

so maybe history doesn’t repeat itself

it just seems to rhyme a lot

and we’re just caught up in the bad remix

If you don’t write your histories and tell your stories

Someone else will

And I’m not saying it’s the man

And that someone
is usually really white

Really old

And Really male

Someone need to tell my young students that

Vietnamese people

My people

My History is more than 2 textbook pages about a war

We’re a culture, a peoples, a way of life

Someone needs to tell my Hmong student

That his people’s history of helping the US CIA

In Secret War

And why its still a god damn secret

And no one knows about it

We need to tell our own stories

and if hypocritical historians can

ridiculously rant on this racist

run-down of history

than I can do it too

from now on

the migration of Southeast Asians to America

since the fall of Saigon

will now be known as

“Manifest beautification”

Cause goddammit we look good

When we talked about

Generalitistic construct that justifies a reverse racism

Called “Melting Pot of America”

Will now be called “Pho-ism”

Cause a little bit of Pho makes

Everything better

And mother is the real P.O.W.

Not prisoner of war

But through living through a refugee camp for 8 months

She was in a prison of warriors

We will write our histories

We will make our remixes

And this poem is the beginning of my mix tape

Turtle Tran
By Fong Tran

she has everything turtle
from turtle pillows to
turtle tissue dispenser
from turtle wallets
to hundreds of turtle plush toys
her obsession
her trademark
Vivi “Turtle” Tran
the label says it all
as hard wood finish glaze shell
protect from
mother angry yelling
father forever absence
ex-boyfriend abuse
and brother overcastting shadow of expectations

she fights back like snapping turtles
holding down stone cold silences
against curse word punches
and accusation blows

“you stole mom’s money”
“you broke the mirror”

she fights back without retaliation
or reaction but
she’ll win races
 over rabbits
slow and steady
any day
so I stand witness to her strength
our family turtle
my little sister
our brother-sister love never looked like
they Disney channel Nemo love
between crush and squirt turtles
or Franklin and family turtles love
that was always on TV
our love is like turtles birth
when baby hatchlings came out shells
walking in predator infested crossings
to reach safe water haven homes
our blood lines leave the same harsh trails to walk
but we walk them together

our cold-blooded claws
clinch
because we know we can handle it
and it keeps us together and strong

our turtle heads tuck inside shiny shells
from evitable everyday dangers
keep us safe
from the welfare barely benefits poverty
to the educational racist barriers
from the neighborhood shootings
to the ethnic gang friend violence

we move together
like little front right
left back feet at a time
like little front left
right back feet at a time

You know I will always have your back
because you sit on my back
little sister