JEET KUNE DO

for Fred Ho (Aug. 10, 1957- April 12, 2014)

The Green Monster big band 
swings through the Gateless Gate
with screeching mantras heralding
Fred Ho’s homecoming
Cal Massey’s “Black Liberation Movement”
is playing over your naked, green body 
with all five billion cancer cells 
crushing the Walls of Jericho and
the Capitalist Industrial Health Complex

You’re here to kick ass
with all six octaves of your baritone sax
performing jeet kune do like Bruce Lee
and Muhammed Ali
You kicked down the doors at Sloan Kettering
You passed away, to shed your baggage
every possession, every book, every album
every dollar, every cent
every vital organ, kidney, bladder,
colon, rectum, flushed to the cosmic toilet
Because nothing cures cancer 
as long as its malignant breath 
thrives in the soul and kills
the imagination

Initial Beth Israel Medical Oncology Consultation Note:
Pelvic recurrence of adenocarcinoma of the sigmoid colon
Nothing cures cancer
For eight years you lived in renunciation 
an atheist monk preparing for death
A shaved acolyte eating raw foods
renouncing the food industry and meat 
the music industry and competition
the ego and technology 
the Health Industry and its obscene profits
extracted from human sacrifice and grief

Yes, cancer is king
in the most affluent of societies
in the most warring of nations
In the most sinister of plots

Oh, you radical cancer warrior! 
You Celestial Green Monster!
You avenging green angel of the 
raging downtrodden!
God does not exist in heaven, you claim
God exists in Hell, in the Matrix
where you have descended like Orpheus
in search of the fleeting shadow of freedom
to emerge, a soldier regurgitating 
the wound of your own flesh
Subjected to the IC’s of the unholiest 
of wards and the emptiest of empires
that threatened to break you and
nuke every cell and bone in your body
You survived to slay
the slave master's many heads
rather than surrender to the tyranny of 
‘squaredom, mediocrity and mushyness’

Nothing cures cancer 
that destroyer of nature and beauty
that deceiver of nations and humanity
that cancer that is insatiable
that cancer that is Capitalism
so long as its malignant curse 
thrives in the toxic cells of
our broken imagination
So you have crossed the divide
beyond Mars, beyond Marx, beyond ‘A to Z’ 
Oh faithful warrior for all lost seasons 
You have lived in struggle and died not in vain
but in love and forgiveness 
You have been tried in the fire and come out pure gold!
E ma ho! Fred Ho!
Jeet kune do!

Copyright 2014 by Genny Lim