Monday Poems: "Kicking the Habit" — by Lawson Fusao Inada

Late last night, I decided to

stop using English.

I had been using it all day—

talking all day,

listening all day,

thinking all day,

reading all day,

remembering all day,

feeling all day,

and even driving all day,

in English—

when finally I decided to

stop.

So I pulled off the main highway

onto a dark country road

and kept on going and going

until I emerged in another nation and . . .

stopped.

There, the insects

inspected my passport, the frogs

investigated my baggage, and the trees

pointed out lights in the sky,

saying,

“Shhhlllyyymmm”—

and I, of course, replied.

After all, I was a foreigner,

and had to comply . . .

Now don’t get me wrong:

There’s nothing “wrong”

with English,

and I’m not complaining

about the language

which is my native tongue.

I make my living with the lingo;

I was even in England once.

So you might say I’m actually

addicted to it;

yes, I’m an Angloholic,

and I can’t get along without the stuff:

It controls my life.

Until last night, that is.

Yes, I had had it

with the habit.

I was exhausted,

burned out,

by the habit.

And I decided to

kick the habit,

cold turkey,

right then and there

on the spot!

And, in so doing, I kicked

open the door of a cage

and stepped out from confinement

into the greater world.

Tentatively, I uttered,

“Chemawa?     Chinook?”

and the pines said

“Clackamas, Siskiyou.”

And before long, everything else

chimed in with their two cents’ worth

and we had a fluid and fluent

conversation going,

communicating, expressing,

echoing whatever we needed to

know, know, know . . .

What was it like?

Well, just listen:

Ah, the exquisite seasonings

of syllables, the consummate consonants, the vigorous

vowels of varied vocabularies

clicking, ticking, humming,

growling, throbbing, strumming—

coming from all parts of orifices, surfaces,

in creative combinations, orchestrations,

resonating in rhythm with the atmosphere!

I could have remained there

forever—as I did, a will.

And when I resumed my way,

my stay could no longer be

“ordinary”—

as they say,

as we say, in English.

For on the road of life,

in the code of life,

there’s much more to red than

“stop,”

there’s much more to green than

“go,”

and there’s much, much more to yellow than

“caution,”

for as the yellow

sun clearly enunciated to me this morning:

“Fusao. Inada.”

 *     *     *     *     *

Lawson Fusao Inada is an emeritus professor of writing at Southern Oregon University in Ashland and was the fifth poet laureate of the state of Oregon, serving from 2006-2010.

Inada's work has been recognized with fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts,  the American Book Award, the Oregon Book Award and the Pushcart Prize.

He is the author of three collections of poetry—Legends from Camp, Before the War and Drawing the Line, in which the above poem is included. He is also the coeditor of two ground-breaking anthologies of Chinese American and Japanese American Literature: The Big Aiiieeeee!: An Anthology of Chinese American and Japanese American Literature and Only What We Could Carry: The Japanese American Internment Experience.