Blink and it’s gone the gingko bare, not golden any old tree now another bleak gray day could be any Northern city really from this low height every houseplant shoved up by the window for the the briefest glimpse of light, probably too cold and dry for the orchid but mild discomfort soft complaint that’s how you know you’re alive the crepe jasmine that never unfurls its blooms, waiting for something that never arrives, sometimes […]
With each night the question grows more pronounced curving around like a road a sharper turn than expected headlights only reaching so far forward motion the only certain thing
If not resentment what then? Tomorrow a sulking rain. Even without an action premonition of motion premeditated carelessness a glance might linger or it might be furtive but like a glancing blow it also lands
Stilled, the chills sets in in fingers and toes and heels– still, it seems easier to stay in so many ways, yes, facile– but the sky is cloudy and the moon is half full, what blame is there really? No long shadows here, regret like one too many, only one, so easily walked back and the sun tomorrow outside this window is such a ridiculous shade of gold– generosity, magnimosity, can’t look right at it, […]
a game, to step around the fallen leaves, to not disturb the early hours you can’t not face it properly cold out now and it isn’t a coincidence if there’s a causal link what comes next is mostly predictable
Nightime and raining in Akihabara screens shout at nobody in particular and songs play on in endless short loops, Yodobashi, yodobashi, even here up seven floors in a narrow corridor stacked with bins of diodes, capacitors, secret parts foreign as the writing on the wall– signs here have no meaning for us– we enter if the door is open, and stare, entranced, as small things start to move, or dance, or wait for us to […]
Recently arrived, wide-eyed and awake well past midnight, dyssynchronous– the ginko here has turned to gold rain plastering leaves to cold windows– it was quite warm still in Tokyo, and mostly green with neon evenings and the unbelievable lightness of being always in transit, mostly uncomprehending, empty as a mouth hanging open in surprise at some novelty, beauty requiring no formal translation, the now familiar clatter of bells at the shrine, claps and bows and […]
It’s sunny in the mountains but it isn’t sunny here fog expands, descends bright with day but clinical, sterile silence like a tumor excised or silence like the scalpel– malignant and precise– the skyscrapers disappear into the white inversion, soundlessly no breath of wind the gingko leaves a thousand stilled tongues
Crescent moon mostly a shadow mostly nothing absence of light each night listening for the voice hearing it wishing I hadn’t– the matte of lack having plenty but just not that– the rest is black but this silver sliver shiny as promise pulling like desire like a hook through the mouth
the garage door of the building across the street flies open an anxious eyelid creaking, sleepy the suns sets earlier and earlier these days trail off suggestively this is sharper an intentional silence it says everything it needs to
OPTIONAL POETRY 