My White Cloak
My White Cloak Part one:
Place
Entering day by day (1)
Into a place to grow and stay
Into the foundational walls of old
To do as we’re told
A marketplace some may say (5)
Where morals are set on display
And mounted like gold
To all the bidders are sold
What am I?
I’m a school by and by (10)
My White Cloak Part two:
Spotlight (elementary school)
The spotlight glares down (1)
My cloak swiftly surrounds
The fabric shell billows but stays
The light bends, and sways,
As my cloak still protects, (5)
The spotlight redirects
Darting, flirting, senselessly until
It moves in for the kill
Someone is found
And without sound (10)
The essence resists,
But is lost in the fists
My White Cloak Part three:
Defense Mechanism
Beautiful while aloft (1)
Flawless, pearly, soft
No one can see you, hear
No need to fear
While holding me tight, (5)
I am your hide
A warm shell of need,
To use daily indeed
What am I, you pry?
A white cloak in reply (10)
My White Cloak Part four:
Perdition (Middle school)
At an age so tender, I was cast in the fire (1)
Where torments relayed as an echoing choir
They took my fair cloak
And made it soak
Expiring between mud and mire (5)
Humiliated in its entire
With my deflector shattered
And a conscience battered
I crept forward, stripped of all rank
Deeper into the chasm I sank (10)
Molting my identity behind
My path resigned
My White Cloak Part 5:
A means
I inflict painful feeling (1)
That inspires growth and feeling
My touch is cool
Like an arctic pool
My breadth is fine (5)
With uses sublime
My wits are keen
Though I’m often unseen
You inquire my form?
To sewing needles conformed (10)
My White Cloak Part six:
Sakura kimono (High school)
Enter a spirited new world (1)
Filled with whimsy, and wonder swirled
A place to develop new talent divine
To advance in speech and rhyme
From the rising sun vernacular (5)
I mastered things spectacular
Gaining bolts of salmon red
To sew upon my cloak with thread
Where once upon stood a pale, bleached veil
Could blossom into silken mail (10)
Never again would this cloak of age
Cover visage simply to assuage
This poem collection is built upon the concept of 'my white cloak' or my ability to easily blend into dominant society especially during elementary school. By middle school however my cloak is damaged because I never seemed to fit in with the people around me. In high school however, I don a 'sakura kimono' in place of my white cloak indicating either that I have finally chosen not to simply adhere to social norms or simply that I will choose to hide behind my interests in Japanese culture and society rather than my own.
I would also like to note that the first, third, and fifth poems are poems that personify specific things that are relevant to the direct next section.
This poem was originally written as a final project for an Asian American Studies course I took at U.W. in the winter of 2012
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