Welcome to the Tokyo Poet Website. Access is simple and straightforward. Just press one of the links below to reach poems about a particular place or theme. Clear thought is always difficult, so if youre thinking of employing a mental stimulant, I strongly suggest making it a double.
HOTSHOTS
This morning something is trying to tell us – and I dont mean one of those cheesy Internet things with half the vowels missing and numbers where letters should be. Just for a moment, imagine this as a perfect world, where everyone is actually quite mellow, without fenderbenders or heartburn, people free to choose their own adult beverage with 500 really good cable channels, nobody hung up, hungry, burnt out, requiring prayer meditation twelve steps, whatever, just to realize which ends up. Suppose civilization hadnt already collapsed; like you could still drink a cup of coffee without worrying about bowel cancer, or the religious right had never started believing Gods plan for the World is written in the Bible, and you could still buy a set of snow tires and not know the guys who made them caused your neighbor to lose his house and move his family into a dangerous slum. Just imagine Toby Keith never happened. Likewise the Dot. Com Bubble, the Housing Bubble, the Oil Boom, the Gold Rush, public education was still o.k., global banking, the Patriot Act, Iraq, Afghanistan, Putin, Reagan, Bush, Tiger Woods, the giant floating garbage swirl, predatory lending and the Chinese Economic Miracle, shrinking job markets, a permanent underclass and permanent wars. Because even if we clean up the mass mess – the whole Planet drinking shade-grown coffee, gnawing on free-roaming chicken, sporting loads of really swell duds, great medical care, a squeaky clean upper atmosphere, everybody making mutually consenting decisions about underarm deodorants – how long before the slick tricks by the big cheeses, Teflon dons, and top bananas get us right back in the same soup? Tokyo, Sunday, 05/27/12
PERVERSIONS OF MODERN LIFE
Dodging bicycle housewives, heading for Kawaguchi Station, Im temporarily distracted from the Big Picture – gas, stomach pains, Eurozone screw-ups, sombrero nose candy wars, Fukushima radiation deluge Is that a toxic chemical spill eating the sidewalk or just a pensioners poodle answering Natures call? Every day the Planet gets hotter louder stickier – High horse America, squeaky-clean Berlin, bullhorn noisy self-righteous bromides: fresh air, pure water, pennypinching, discipline, entrepreneurship, freedom, risk-taking, good posture, green leafy vegetables Ye, though I walk through the Shadow of Death, I fear no Japanese housewife – no kamikaze bikerider barrel-assing peaceful pedestrian pathways, banzai charge through barbedwire red light, blasting across sedate wheelchair crosswalks Another day, another crisis: Mumbai up in smoke; Athens begging along skid road; Cairo on the rag; Soup kitchens dot Madrid; China democracy on the fritz. Infernal noise machine: hornhonk mouth blare gunshot blabber backfire argue bomblast accuse alibi scream No Exit. No way out. Earth condemned to ceaseless flops failures sermonizing, infernal toxic bullbleep barrage: too big to fail Supersize getting better making progress Thinking human brain swamped by bogus information tidal wave: whole thought drowned gagged choked by zircon explanation, Mickey Mouse percentage, Chamber of Commerce feel-good money prophecy But here in Tokyo, Skytree Tower is up and running. Tokyo, Sunday, 05/20/12