To Editors of the World

Yodel said: "Oh editors, please eat my cheese;

Please bore more holes through my cheese,

So that I may see more clearly."

Multa said: "How can you be so sarcastic?"

Yodel disappeared into the Alps to make more cheese.

Multa said: "The Alps? People certainly make cheese in other places, too. Why the Alps?"

Yodel returned to being milk, and then grass.

Multa said: "How unscientific. And distasteful."

Yodel was never a thing; it has always been and will be a voice, a harp singing in the wind.

To Be Continued

It is too easy to despair,

To fall into despair and to keep falling,

Until your knees buckle and

You begin to see your father's face as some distant object

But on the other side of the screen, you do know that

A world, some world, exists

Do twigs fall out of despair?

No, they fall with gladness - Zhuangzi knows.

And the carp, too, sing their own songs.

Clouds

Pyrus: What is happening to my mind? It is all clouded over, too well protected from the sun. It doesn't burn anymore, as it used to. Doesn't get scorched, or pierced by the moon any longer. I have ceased to feel, and know it is because of the ticking clock. No tears, no words.

Tyrol: That is a lie, a lie! You lie, you feeling thing, you sentient, joculating being. Your mind is hardly protected from that light bulb, aye, let alone the sun!

Pyrus: But the clock!

Tyrol: The clock is in your heart. And it never rushes. Even when it's beating like mad, how incredibly slowly it keeps time, compared to, say, a mouse's heart, or a fly's.

Monsieur Bushy

Shallowness, I would be so happy if you could stay in my bathtub

Or in my plate of soy sauce;

Why do they criticize Monsieur Bush so much?

Granting that Monsieur Bushy needs to examine the root-causes of the criticisms directed against himself,

We do, too.

Why don't they ask why, really why, an American president had no choice but to turn so paranoid,

So fearful and fearless all at the same time?

Of course, determinism is bad and Monsieur Bush may have less intelligence than an apple (what is intelligence?).

But why do so few see beyond the wallpaper, however tasteful?

Monsieur Bushy is crying, voicelessly;

His manly chest heaves with each sob.

Millennia

Pilippett sang: "Inert as a rock, I sit

But why did I think rocks were inert?

They are changing, slowly, millennium by millennium

Why can't animals and plants also be part of geological time?"

Why the need to rush and be rushed?

Confucius, You Amuse Me

Confucius, you amuse me with your outward diffidence,

When you said only the heavens truly understood you,

That really no one around you knew you well.

What cheerful desolation: why not choose the whole universe over a mediocre world?

If you had felt as if your life had been a failure, Confucius,

That is why your words still continue to make music in our ears, even today.

Still a petty world, but the skies have never been so immense.

Raindrops

I have said, again and again, that paths are never fixed, like rivers. Rivers change their courses all the time, with each sip of tea that you take, there, here. I have said, time and again, that real answers are incomplete ones, unfinished, and always needing work. Otherwise, they would all be lies, flat lies. Have I stressed, over and over, the importance and the difficulty of solitude, of remaining aloof enough so that you can exist, regardless of whether people see you or not.

Elemental

Rainfall, silence, I cannot sleep

Poetry, there is too much poetry in this world

Sleepless poems and dry throats

My Refuge

Gutenberg said: "I am too harsh, too harsh in a world that is already too harsh."

A deep hole only deepens, and a blue flower only becomes bluer.

The laundry bag is my refuge.

Everyone Is Floating

Idioms elude me. Idioms, as in the basic rules of speech and conduct in human society. I never know how to smile.

Details fly away like birds. Roots turn into clouds, but fail to precipitate: If there is no gravity, the atmosphere evaporates. If g=0, then cantbreath/e <>

I am thinking of the impossible scenario, in which people and houses, flora and fauna, soil and lakes, start floating upward, with much serenity as violence, into the sky. But if I am floating, too, then I will never know that the whole world was also floating.

I am a bad passenger, questioning the integrity of my own vehicle.

Night

I have been tired for a day and a half, and now I have stuffed myself, with jam tomato juice jambon lime half-moons curry mango mutton bread yogurt bread salad oil tea water air the sky the universe the sun and night. Fountains rise and fall in the dark, and you, light-eyed but deep in the shadows, are waving to a group of squirrels who have appeared on the surface of the moon.

Words

Words, you never see me pass through life

Thinking about you

Worrying that you might one day finally suffocate me

With your cruel aftertaste, oh words

You completely defy the mirror's attempts to intervene

And defy the reader's flaying arms

My nose does not smell you, words

Even when you are there, and are burning like incense

So I breathe you in and out, through my ears

As if each of you were a song, a serenade

Undecidability

Laisse-moi tranquille, je suis bovin.

Je mastique, et mastique encore.

I have forgotten how to swallow.

Violet and Vuvu

Violet sang: "When does anger turn into violence? Automatons are full of anger, and they, devoid of life, slash and kill. Each of us carries an automaton within us, or two, or more. The automatons, they never sleep. They have never lived. But they form a part of us."

Vuvu then whispered: "Does violence clear away the anger that thickens, immeasurably thickens, our brains so much that we eagerly stop thinking? Yes, it does, and that is the problem."

I Love Chilli

I love chilli too much.

I love chilli too much.

I love chilli and chilli too much.

Cogito

I cannot be sure, ergo sum.

Why don't I have a job, Marionette?

Eating ice cream makes me happy. Most of the time.

Modes of Travel

As much as I love to travel,

Far and near,

I may still prefer a life of reading

To a month spent abroad,

Or to a year-long post across the sea,

Over mountainous terrain:

Reading is as good a mode of transportation as can be.

Isn't it?

Grandma said: "Good is not a word."

Chemicals Dua

What was I trying to say? Or rather, what was Quiti trying to say? I suppose she was trying to say that each chemical, even a chemical, has a life of its own. That chemicals are not simply chemicals. They undergo many changes, whether they like it or not; they bond and disband, dance and sleep. They have voices, faces, and feet. If I were a bag of chemicals, then I should be very content.

Chemicals

Quiti sang: "There are clouds, yonder, where my grandmother lives. Apple trees and orchards, they form a reddish cloud together. Blue storms and fire, a green one. High above the telephone poles, the sky rang. Then an emptiness came over me like a raincloud. Something fell, and I began to smell chemicals all around me. The chemicals seemed to be all around me. They swallowed and embraced me. They were my only friends, my jewels. They never came to see me; they always ambushed me. When I tried to hunt them down, they scattered back into their boxes on the Periodic Table. They were too small for me to see, and yet I was small enough for them. They tried to choke me at the same time as they nourished me, half-reluctantly, almost by accident. They said to me, 'You are just a bag of chemicals.' I couldn't say anything. I was too sleepy and dumb to say anything, and knew that the chemicals in my brain were inducing the sleepiness and my own stupidity.... I will not be defeated, I decided, but the hills, the verdant hills, all around sang to the chemicals, and the shifting sunlight seemed to nod in proud agreement, more often so than in disagreement. The sky was now a bright pink. 'Was it a sunset?' I asked. 'Maybe,' Drew answered. 'Perhaps my eyesight has deteriorated?' I asked again. This time, a goldfish answered, 'Perhaps, perhaps not.' Then I asked, 'Is the world coming to an end?' With no pause in between, I said, 'Decidedly not.' I then asked, 'Am I really just a bag of chemicals?' I had to answer this question myself. 'No, no!,' I said, hurriedly. 'I am not a bag of chemicals. Instead, I am a chemical of bags, or better yet, an alchemy of bags. Full of bags, I fly around like a chemical, sometimes sit underground for many years like a chemical, and jump, consume, and am consumed like a chemical, all very clumsily because of the weight of all the bags I carry, and because the alchemical processes in my heart slow me down, for better or for worse.' I may be a ghost. Or a monster."

One breath, two breaths. A breath-ful of chemicals is what tells a story and sings many a song in the evening air.

Mountain

Because they/we don't understand,

And they/we pretend to be not pretending to understand,

They/we hang on to little ends of words randomly,

Without realizing that they/we have instead actually stepped

On the foot of a beautiful man or woman,

or chanced upon a mountain a thousand years old.

Confusionius Said

Lost, again lost, forever lost, foie gras.

Depressed, always depressed, still depressed, Denpasar.

Eating, every day eating, never not eating, music.

Confusionius said:

"The universe is wide; how can you not get lost?

"The heart does have a broad range of channels; how can depression not be one, or actually, several, of them, just like there's CNN, BBC, and ABC?

"You find yourself again when eating. When you eat, you cheer up, whether you like it or not.

"Then you fall again. But falling is not the same as failing. With each fall, your vision improves. You fail when you do not take a fall."

Swing

Qiu qian (秋千): thousand in autumn, oh swing.

Swinging back and forth, high above the millennial mountains and glaciers,

People and houses;

Or low, in between the legs and just barely above the toes.

Swinging, now this side, now that side,

There and there always, never here.

Absent is the gentleness of my grandfather's rocking chair.

The 20th Century Clogged My Toilet

The 20th century has become a kind of Costco for us. We go there for everything. Everywhere else we assume is dirtier, moldier, not as efficient, without looking. The 20th century is an important century, but foremost because it has prevented us, or at least me, from being able to see far and wide, beyond the windshield and my computer screen. Our century, the 21st, need not be a continuation of the previous century. In fact, time is a hungry rabbit. It jumps around, and lives in the woods somewhere. It goes on vacation during the winter, except when it ventures out on secret runs across the snowy plain.

The Proverbial Reversal of Fate

Putting one foot forward, you slipped, fell (rather dramatically), and found, in a dusty corner of the floor, the 100-yen coin you had always been looking for, without knowing.