I am a Poet: Shizu Homma
Shizu Homma is a Brooklyn born, Philadelphia transplant. She is primarily a dance artist, who has been performing since 1997. In 2016, she had to take a break from dancing because of decades old injuries that became exacerbated. While she was less mobile and lower functioning, she started to revisit art forms that she loved in her youth and early adulthood. Her visual arts have been at Jed Williams Gallery, High 5 Gallery, City Hall, Black Cat Tavern, and A-Space. Her performance art has been at Grace Exhibition Space and the Asian Arts Initiative. She has been reading poetry in different locations in Philly. Shizu has started dancing again in 2018. Her dance work since has been seen at Vox Populi, Mt. Moriah Cemetary, Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance, Practice Gallery, Mascher Space Collective, and in Wormtooth’s video “These are Our Demons and Our Demons Are Loud”
What are you eating for comfort?
By choice and ease of preparation, pasta fazool and polenta have been regulars.
What are you binge watching? re-watching?
Dance videos.
What was the last thing that made you smile or laugh?
That FB meme where a couple reenacts a Hieronymous Bosch scene.
What is a poem you’d like to share with our readers?
Machines with a cool glowing sheen, work hard to make our lives clean
Think its extremely supreme, a system that’ll rectify me.
Make us the same, so we don’t feel shame,
Innocuous minds for a peaceful race,
Neutralize out tendencies, to make a great reality
Inject in us disgust for variety
Manipulate our emotions with sentimental poetry
No more melancholy, fill us with folly, illusions, delusions, change my name
Systems with powerful detectors, operated by obedient inspectors
Watch over us and now we see, freedom is too much responsibility
Lies of a time, disquiets like flies
We are the hosts for the parasite ghosts
If we start to scream, sedate us with dreams
Administered with scene to scene to scene continuity
Enforce us to embrace the extremely inane
Immolate the saints that are good but insane
Worship the corpses, then obey, So we can be the same and have no pain
I don’t scream alone or have fear in my home. Cure me of my folly,
Too much life= aversion from strife
Invest in me unworldly dreams
Pop culture are like vultures that leave sweet memories
We’ll let you eat cake, its for your sake
Instill in me rumours, Implant in me tumours
Cut and paste humanity
Is there anything else you’d like to tell our readers?
Between ages 19-25 (1990-1996-ish) I lived in Williamsburg, Brooklyn (before it got “nice”) and Gowanus, Brooklyn (before it got nice) this one survived from those years. You can tell from reading this, that at that time, I was listening to bands like Anti-Nowhere League, Vice Squad, Varukers, and Chaos UK. I didn’t title most of anything I made back then, and still don’t like to.