Poetry

OUTSIDE FACE 建前上 Amongst the evening buzz of pachinko parlors, school children search through the typical clientele to find their love-hotel-smitten, once-loyal fathers. Together, they ride dawn trains  crawling with forever-smoking, double-toothed relics of the lost, late Taisho era, still hung up on gaikoku jin hysteria. Claustrophobia creeps along with them down the carriage’s menagerie of fractured families. Gazing enviously, malaise-plagued uni students sit, locking eyes with ripped-stocking-teen-runaways  fantasizing what it’d be like to be a rebel on the loose, to have nothing left to lose.  Smothered by the crowds, a businessman takes calls in the back, he made a secret pact with a clique on the net,  a samurai-kinda-guy, he’s organizing next week’s group suicide meet, the woman beside him, she listens intently but does nothing.  The 8 am pedestrian crossing cacophony radiates rush, so loud, so lonely. Lost spirits call taxis home  while glass pillars of chrome continue to grow. The city alleys sick with saccharine-sweet vending machines sell cigarettes and energy drinks. Flashing, neon candy capitalism rules her streets yet high in the nests of forest-coated mountaintops the enlightened sit Zazen. Peace still lies through bamboo-laden hills, in quant lantern-lined shrines. The cherry blossoms still bloom and Amaterasu’s rays still shine. Oh, sweet land of the rising sun, mythical, ancient and modern so devoted to tatemae, your porcelain facade you have your great lover the West fooled.

LAKERS' TEE Laker’s Tee was published as the winning poem in Mindfood magazine, December 2022. Angus, 18, says “I wrote this poem at 3am after finding out the friend I’d developed romantic feelings for was in love with someone else”. Writing ‘Laker’s Tee’s was an act of catharsis. Throughout the poem, the narrator oscillates between jealousy, self-pity and adoration, yet ultimately realises he can appreciate what his friend gave him - releases him. 
He keeps only a memento - the Laker’s t-shirt. So this is me admitting defeat, I never got a hold of my emotions, Amidst the intensity of a thousand oceans, you were the lighthouse, the anchor, the shipman rocked by the notions. Though I held you like a slipping, July summer night, tight against the midnight street lantern light when seasons change, you’ll be a phantom, right? Still, etched in my memory is you in your Lakers’ tee, Our souls fused together serendipitously like a bridge of wax formed between two candles weeping ceaselessly. I tend to think at birth, we’re attached by invisible strings to a mass of helium balloons,  yet our Icarus wings poorly attunes  to life’s pins and pricks and slings so gravity brings us down to Earth, When our feet hit the ground, it’s too late to reverse it, it’s worse if you think about it, With you, I thought I could fly, but in hindsight, staying quiet was the ultimate white lie. Yet I pray you stay golden, unscathed by dusk, Crystallized in time like a locket that never rusts, Be gilded like Autumn leaves, Don’t let winter wither you  into a fossil of your former self,  Keep the memory of me as a souvenir, a dusty snowglobe on a shelf, Swear I’ll shut up now forever and accept change like a dark shift in the weather. Naturally, she’s the only sunrise you see, radiant as a shooting star, she shines much brighter than me, Sweeter than Spring day in her eyes resides the gleam of fresh rain on pavement, Kiss her under the cherry trees and engrave it in the oak, ‘forever my b’, Lie on the grass, interpret the clouds till you fall fast asleep As long as you’re happy, I’ll be at peace.