‘There are places I remember’
“There are places I’ll remember all my life, though some have changed, Some forever, not for better, some have gone and some remain…”.
—Excerpted lyrics from the Beatles song, ‘In My Life’ released in 1965.
I rarely respond to trolls online but three comments on one of my last weekly submissions to the Literary Nook during National Poetry Month persuaded me.
One troll called me a “white tyrant,” another suggestion was in a two-word sentence, “Do Joey” implying I should write about myself. The writer must have not read my T.O.A.S.T—Telling Old Age Senescent Tales—which has become Senescent Sonnets over the past few years. In that ongoing series I address my problems with obesity, alcohol, and the onset of senescence and dementia in a humorous and self-deprecating manner. A third comment was “no one in his hometown has ever heard of him.” I don’t understand the “white tyrant” slur. It sounds like a MAGA-based transactional insult ala 45. I’m sure the writer, who like most online trolls disguises his identity, never read one of my multiple entries for the past two years during Black Poetry Month. Or knew that I read poetry regularly at a Black community “Poet’s Corner” in Las Vegas. The only other white reader at these poetry jams was an elderly blind Christian poet. About not being known in my hometown? During high school and college years in the late ’60s and ’70s I performed and sang with my jug band at nearby Alfred University with jazz great Charles Lloyd, at community centers in NY, and folk music clubs on Cape Cod, Massachusetts. I read my poems at Haiku North America events in Ottawa, Canada and Ogaki, Japan during my teaching career.
I sang Irish songs at a New Orleans café, folk rock songs at restaurants and roadside taverns in Louisiana. I sang Gregorian chant in an ancient mosque to an international group in the Gobi Desert while attending graduate school in Shanghai. I helped write the English script and read the part of a major character for an English language version of a feature length Chinese animation film, produced by Shanghai Animation Film Studio in 1986. It was later shown at a foreign film festival in Canada. I read original poems at various Tinian events at the Veterans Memorial Park, the Tinian public library, and at the opening of a runway at the Tinian airport. (in Chinese Putonghua at the airport by the way).
After retiring I volunteered and taught poetry workshops in public school and private school, some at the JKPL on Saipan. My students on Tinian and Saipan had their poems published over the years right here in the Saipan Tribune. I have been and am known and respected in many places I have called home. These include New York, Louisiana, Nevada, and here in the CNMI. One last thing the trolls don’t know is that my sister and I are in interracial marriages. I have no respect for “white tyrants” and their sycophants. Nor for those demagogues and dictators that POTUS 45 respects and admires. This information is not for the pathetic trolls but for my beloved students yan familia on Tinian and Saipan.
Sing a lullaby or read a poem with your family tonight. Peace in the Middle East and Ukraine.
Joey aka “Pepe Batbon” Connolly is a retired educator who taught in the CNMI, NOLA, and LVNV. He is the Poet Laureate of Tinian and enjoys stargazing.
