Dango

Here I Am

Here I am a zeitgeist bandit, not
Dylan mingling troubadour style
but something softer, of deeper impact
like the chicken warmth of a Roppongi
pita stand, here to say and
announce these things not to the
yawning multitudes of morning commute
news readers, not with the silent shriek
of a man with blogosphere agenda,
I am here to slip a word or two
to the twitchy-fingered chosen few--

Look

I`ll show you as I walk, we`ll pass
the old park and embassy walls,
there will be bicycles coming through,
watch out, the sidewalk guardrails
make it very narrow indeed,
but don`t stop, whenever you walk,
whatever you do, don`t stop

Upper Window Vagrant

People have been talking about windows and windows
buildings and buildings for ages, since the 30`s at least,
guess I`m catching up, so this is progress and everything
from now will be buildings or permutations thereof,
escape from buildings, underground subway mazes,
Disneyland crowds (there`s no escaping from)
mainstreet recreations and cotton candy clouds,
van gogh sunflowers swaying in the listless upper story
apartment, anyway I`m out here on the fire escape,
smoking a joint.

to the skies

funny, the more people read it
the less inspired I become, writing and fitting words
a chore for the benefit of an unnamed audience,
stating the obvious in a bid to capture attention

this is all unconsious and when I get back
to the calm paddling on a lake of my own making
that`s where I am best

I will forget the ordered existence and assumptions
in my own time, will stop punching the clock
of another`s reality, and let myself
float free and untethered
the original walking, talking,
gum-chewing primate

we never win

a long extended adolescent pimple
let stand on the white of his skin too long
boiled up with pain one morning,
squeezing, such relief

she looks through my hair in the morning,
I`m still asleep, finding with satisfaction
a few strands of gray, see she says
youre getting old, as if to say
settle down and marry me

in the morning, the nearby fields
suddenly a frozen white, hours
of crisp clear beauty before
it all turns brown and slush

And I today, even today
15 years on, run my hand over skin
no longer so smooth, guided by
habit forged in adolescence,
searching for a pimple to squeeze.

the flower sake label

stirring on this futon under feather comforter
and feather sleeping bag, my favorite source
of warmth, I am listening again to folk music
on my computer, cause it soothes and have just
taken a sip of rather mellow sake from the bottle
blue and fluting, with an abstract flower label

Thoughts, February

To rescue poems, have teams
with muscles fit for yanking
those stranded in the magazines
where they still exist, tentative and unloved
The poems are there I think, yes
waiting in the folds of mile-long stories
for a prince or frog

When the water from the garden ran out
the leaves were wet and sparkling in the sun
that filtered through the trees, on the hill
I admired this paradise I`d be leaving

Forgetting paegentry, forgetting vice
I hold this apple in my hand and convince
myself, slowly biting, this is my life
yes, and this is the stuff of life
(why this doesn`t work when
I peel a banana)

Caspar Weinberg and Friedrich Nietzsche
sit on a long alpine slope, commiserating
between puffs of pipe and sips of cognac,
the club of sad men with funny names

So we replaced the romance of the frontiersman
with that of the bootlegger, of the men in black suits
standing on modified Model A sideboards, tommy guns
in hand, flashing, flashy city life

a barnacle clings to the wooden pier
half in water, half out, absorbing salt and sunshine
and the the white poop that drops from the seagulls
streaks white over craggy skin
and calcifies during low tide

I smell the burning even today, yea the plastic
is always being burnt here on the farm-littered
outskirts of Tokyo, it`s an old stubborn tradition
that undoes the work of a thousand
bio-conservative engineers.