Name: Dear Bridge
Duration: P00H01M34S
Description: I was writing full-form Horatian odes and just kinda got fed up with it

Dear Bridge

from Quiver by Ken Yoshikawa

	/

Streaming + Download

Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

Purchasable with gift card

$1 USD or more
Buy the Full Digital Album

about

I was writing full-form Horatian odes and just kinda got fed up with it

lyrics

Dear Bridge

Hey crossing, do your stones remember home,
asleep as Texan, Pennsylvanian?
Say ‘hillside’. Make them reminisce as chrome
and steel encrunch them while we take the eon.
Or did we whittle down their memory?
We told them, blasting sand, that home is use,
as bones that breach our mind and reach to speed
our life’s commute to glory.
We took them, taught them, stacked to then produce
this bridge, just like these words here stacked to read.

But I keep walking away from half built bridges.
because I can’t stick to the blueprints
because I tend to dig too deep,
don’t know where I’m bridging to
just want to feel like I’ve arrived.

Thank goodness I just work with words.
and not on any project people must rely on.
I don’t want anyone to rely on me.
I know I’ll always walk away
to quell this shaking need to be OK,
that maybe then I’ll no longer be
this moody baron, so scared
he couldn’t pull himself together
to be the hero he knew he could become.

There’s always something in the night that I call home,
like I was mined from it.

Dear Bridge, the darkness always fits my shape
when I can’t seem to fit the world.
I don’t know where you’ll take me
so this time I’ll float beneath you.
I do not want to be delivered to some other side.
I want to be just held exactly where I am.

credits

from Quiver, released March 30, 2019

license

about

Ken Yoshikawa Portland, Oregon

Ken Yoshikawa is a shin-issei/first generation half-Japanese American poet-actor from Portland, OR. He has been active in the Portland Poetry Slam community since 2014. He loves blue chicken taco trees and resents punctuation and grammar at his convenience. ... more