COME IN TOKYO
TOKYO VISION
Today concrete and steel, tomorrow steel and concrete,
a bright shiny seaweed Nirvana with karaoke and double
chins.
The enormous city, where ghost wannabes float over
night driving ranges, reality gathered together in 24-hour
life sentences, alleyway amnesia dumpsters, giant video
screens talking in voices never used for speaking.
Every day dreamers create the city, imagine its invisible
lines of escape, its taxi lines, its glass walls; construct
wonders, seasons and smoke.
Behold the trains circling and rushing underground,
electric steel passing by beer gardens, art museums,
yellow pants, radiant fish cakes, Mickey & Minney
walking hand in hand.
Look at the egoless department stores loaded with
everything, desireless restaurants fifty floors in the night
sky, suicides, disasters, the moon reflected in chauffeur-
driven limousines.
The city will disappear. The Universe will disappear.
Disappear then reappear. Then disappear again.
There is no before or after.
Trembling city under the volcanos eye.
The immense city full of illusion, anxiety, magic, neon
money numbers, ghosts of Saipan, Iwo Jima, Manchuko,
Nanking, the Coral Sea, Okinawa.
See the incandescent frozen fire.
Death to Kim Jung Il. Death to chop suey. Death to
Chicken McNuggets and the Atomic Bomb. A new Japan
will rise from the ashes.
What goes around comes around in a powerful river of
asphalt, cement, restless spirits, endless desire.
Behold the cherry blossoms at Ueno, the autumn leaves
in Gyoenmae, summer heat, winter slush:
We have four seasons in this country.
We dream the city. We are the city. The city is us.
Walking around the city we encounter the city:
ramen breath, streets of genius, curry beef, iron shutters,
Hollywood movies, hair-of –the-dog, airless evenings,
subterranean shaking, unfinished buildings.
The city where we charge everything, overcome whole
worlds of suffering, eat live fish, honor the war dead, float
on an empty tide of silent voices.
Where we gaze upon the Meiji Shrine. Yasukuni Shrine.
Death Fugues. Alcoholic saints. Human clay. Cloudy
archipelagos.
I speak of the city built by sweat and wind, by ants and
cardboard, inhabited by plastic souls, stray dogs, sushi
bubbles, blind pigeons, erotic masks, sumo bellies.
The city devastated by fusillades of tobacco coughs,
shrieking J-pop, flying golfballs, enka moaning, boiling
seas.
Presently oppressive conformity, later conformist
oppression, the past buried and twisted every day,
lived together in lines appearing and disappearing,
quicksand, funny valentines, kabuki fire drills.
Tokyo, Sunday, 06/24/07
