Poems: Le Deco, 12/20-21/2005

 

SNOW
for Yutaka Endo

 

A package arrives in the mail.

The instructions on the outside read, in Russian,

CAUTION – ONLY OPEN IN CASE OF EXTREME CHAOS

 

OR HEAT.

 

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HAPPY HOLIDAYS
for Jack McLean

 

A cat or dog of unknown origin is approaching quickly. You have been instructed not to pet it; these instructions have come from someone somewhere many years ago, and are just now resurfacing out of the recesses of your memory. As events over the course of this loaded one-or-two-minute moment unfold, the cat or dog produces out of its mouth not a full set of menacing teeth, but a single, living ant. And is this an offering, salutation, or insult. Or Christmas.

 

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DOCUMENT
for Hiroshi Katayose

 

A tourist attraction beckons and I show up, all bells and whistles, face covered with explosive expressions of eager anticipation. At the entrance there is a stern-looking lady and she puts out her hand and I am confused because I am fairly certain that there is supposed to be no admission fee. As it turns out, I am supposed to present her with a detailed document consisting of all of my activities and their durations for the past calendar year. I begrudgingly hand it over, in spite of myself, in spite of the objections of my wife, children, friends and colleagues, all for what, for the sake of tourism, or is there some greater force, a much greater force behind this here exchange, hey I’m asking you.

 

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PARTIAL COMPLETION
for Shogo Kawasaki

 

An ant in the middle of making it,

itself in the process of getting made,

takes donations in the form of panic,

an edible panic and a sedative panic,

and will beg queen ant mercy for it if it has to.

 

_______________________

 

McLouis McVuitton Donald’s
for Yuko Tomoda

 

A man of easy-to-identify nationality starts in the middle of the Champs-Elysées and walks twenty steps east into McDonalds or walks twenty steps west into Louis Vuitton. He is equally familiar with the entrance options to both establishments, and is likewise equally familiar with the selection of consumer products offered by each multinational corporation. He has a catalog for one establishment and carries it into the other establishment, or has products from one establishment and carries it into the other establishment, such act which could possibly attract dissent and disapproval from other patrons of said establishment, if not for the fact that the products are carried in the interior of his body and hence immune to discovery.

 

Both establishments require a certain measure of waiting time before any product may be obtained in exchange for currency of monetary value, and some may claim that the duration of waiting time is in direct proportion to the quality of products purchased, but there are eager young students on the street ready to prove otherwise, should they be given the opportunity. Similarly, both establishments require a certain quantity of currency of monetary value in exchange for any of the products offered, and accordingly, the same group of people will claim that the quantity of currency required for the exchange for products is in direct proportion to the quality of products acquired, and yet of course there is yet another group of eager students on the street who will work with moderate effort in order to prove otherwise. Often they will do this by eating a hamburger, running up and down the street a number of times, thereby demonstrating the physical energy converted from the kilocalories contained in said hamburger. Students with less experience sometimes make the mistake of running immediately after hamburger consumption, in which case they make an ugly scene and do not promote the cause and must be tucked away behind the flower shop so that no one uses him against our case.

 

Those people who still believe in the quality-to-money and quality-to-waiting-time ratios, even after choosing to ignore the heaps of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, will, after waiting in two long lines and dispensing an enormous quantity of currency of monetary value and allowing the establishment to take a record of their passport, walk out of the establishment carrying a box containing a large brown leather bag, and will stroll down the Champs-Elysées slowly, decadently, crushing a hamburger with every step of their high-heeled pointy-toed shoes.

 

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CHAIR
for Yuko Minamikawa

 

A figure of unknown gender is seated in a chair in an unspecified country.

At 12 noon, scientists arrive from all four corners of the world and begin taking measurements.

The figure of unknown gender persists.

At 1pm, the scientists make phone calls, asking for reinforcement tools of measurement.

The figure of unknown gender persists, and continues an unspecified activity in said chair.

At 2pm, the scientists start to work together, and with a sudden heave, push the figure out of the chair and proceed to calculate, in units heretofore unknown to man, the softness of the chair.

 

_______________________

 

MONEY
for Chris Jones

 

I show up, work for eight hours, and at the end of the day, put out my hand.

My boss puts out his hand.

I put out my other hand, and he slaps it, and looks at me as if to say that he shouldn’t have to explain in words the wrongness of my actions.

Indignant, I keep my hands out, although I am growing aware that this is not the most seemly position for a person to be standing for an extended duration of time.

My boss slaps me again.

I persist in standing with my hands out.

I quit my job.

He still stands there, perhaps he is indignant, perhaps I am wrong, I walk away and don’t look back.

I put my hands in my pocket and there is some money in it.

I turn around and my boss has grown very small.

 

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FULL
for Satoshi Matsui

 

I go to visit my friends in a foreign country for a week and they decide to show me everything and take me all over the place and have me eat the local cuisine and see all the sights and go to concerts and look at art and even participate in some local festivals, putting a special costume on my body. The last day of my visit, they tell me that I am very fortunate because I will get to see a special local event that happens very rarely, that I should prepare during the day by putting on dark clothes and eating dark-colored food and staying indoors for the entire day. At night time they pick me up and we drive in the car for a while and then get out and hike up to the top of the hill and all the while they have told me to keep my eyes closed, and then they say I can open my eyes and look up and there is a full moon in the night sky and I don’t say anything.

 

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LADYBUG
for Takako Arai

 

I am looking for my friend who promised to meet me on this street at a time that’s right about now, except we failed to specify exactly at which part of the block we would meet, and even then it should not be a problem because I know exactly what my friend looks like and I am not seeing her at all anywhere on the block. I ask around, to the local shopkeepers, but they haven’t seen her either and I look around some more and I still don’t see her but fortunately we are in Japan and everyone has cell phones and right then she calls and says to look behind me, and I do and I still don’t see her, and she says look down, and I do and I still can’t find her, and she says she is under that pile of swarming ladybugs right there and I am horrified but she says she is having a good time and that I should come and join her and I walk away and that was the sad end of our friendship.

 

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ANT ARCHITECTURE

 

A bunch of freethinking and overeducated ants rally together and decide that they want to be the ones to walk in the sun.

 

First they go on a field trip, or rather, a study trip, as they would prefer that you call it, to a local construction site. They watch the beams of a house go up, study the angles in the rooftop, take notes, gather in a small huddle and discuss.

 

The next day they do the same thing, at a general motors factory in Detroit. They observe the pieces of metal and glass fit into the frame of the car, take notes, and tuck the information away somewhere in their anty ant brains.

 

The study is conducted over a period of many many days, during which time they observe lawn mowers, spider webs, swimming pools, garbage piles, apple trees, and the like. We’re over thinking it, says one of the freethinking ants, as the group enters yet another small huddle, atop an ice floe in Colorado.

 

At last agreeing on that one fact that their thinking and note-taking and studying is producing little results, they agree that they might be best served by following their own ant intuition, rather than trying to emulate humans with their notebooks and writing implements. One of the ants is disappointed.

 

So they go and go and go, over the river and through the woods, over hill and dale, uphill trails in the snow, through dirt, grass, office buildings and private schools, until one day they find themselves in a lovely pile of medium-fine woodchip, replete with passageways, dead-ends, multiple entries and exits – in other words, everything a freethinking ant could ever hope to find in a home.

 

There is no need for discussion; they move in immediately with a minimum amount of effort, happy as a group of freethinking ants could ever hope to be. Soon enough they are all settled in, there are lovely shafts of light that come at them from various directions, and at night they sleep with the peaceful smiling feeling of superiority over the average ant, until the next day I discover ants in my hamster cage, tell my mom about it, who promptly freaks out and empties all the contents of the cage out in the backyard, as I pull a single ant out of my hamster’s left ear.

 

_______________________

 

THE ANT ON THE SHIP COMING TOWARDS ME

 

is, by default, also coming towards me, and has been doing so for as long as it can remember. Without having ever met me or having any concept of what ‘me’ might be. And in fact I am not really me, I am a sugar cube in the middle of the ocean and the boat is a boat jacked boat, and now what kind of wussy boat is going to get taken over an ant. Or, for example, penguins.

 

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COLOR

 

I leave the house for a couple of months, and upon my return find that a gang of ants and a gang of cockroaches have been having turf wars in my home. I don’t actually see any ants or cockroaches there, but I can tell by those little tiny colorful bandanas they have left behind.

 

_______________________

 

HITCHHIKING

 

I was never very good at double dutch, which I am growing keenly aware of as everyone else has already found a ride. We are trying to cross the intersection, but since we’re not fast enough to get across while the cars are stopped, we need to get up on a shoe and hitch a ride on someone’s foot. A moving foot is tricky, though – you have to jump on at just the right moment, and then quickly get up to a lace or a zipper or buckle or something, anything to hold onto – the ride can be rough, depending on how fast the human is traveling, and on what kind of shoes. You better not fall off, is all I know. And so anyway, all the other ants have already gone and I am about to be left behind, no I already have been left behind, unless I get on that shoe, no that one, this one, this next one, or that one, oh.

 

_______________________

 

PARADE

 

Today is a unique holiday, commemorated by a parade of black, four-legged stools going down the closed-off street. All the neighborhood ants come out to take a look, most of whom take a very critical stance.

 

_______________________

 

GIRL TALK

 

We are sitting around the table eating and drinking and exchanging stories about flashers, gropers, underwear thieves, your general assortment of urban perverts. When I tell the story about the man who came up to me and opened up his bag and offered me one of a teeming million wiggling ants in his bag, the whole table goes silent and I am reminded all over again how hard it is to get along with the women in this country.

 

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HAZING

 

Takes place in several parts of the house at once. Each ant is instructed to choose a light bulb, and stay there as long as is possible. The real test comes when the human inhabitants come home and start turning on the lights. The clever ants who can read numbers have chosen bulbs with lower wattage, but most ants are not as literate as all that. The humans proceed to make their wholesome dinner using organic ingredients. The first ant to drop is immediately eliminated.

 

_______________________

 

THE CANNIBAL

 

has made his latest killing, he sits down with his fork and special knife, all excited about digging into the flesh, the chewy stomach, the long intestines. When he bites into an intestine, he is startled to find it stuffed with live, undigested ants, and has no idea what to make of this new and bewildering situation.

 

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ART PROJECT

 

I am observing an ant trail from the tenth floor of a building, and photograph the exact same frame, once per second, sixty times, in order to have an accumulated minute of ants. Later, much later, I go back to the same exact spot where the ants once were, and place a grain of rice in the exact location of each ant in each frame. I am growing satisfied with the precision of my accumulation of ants and time as represented by grains of rice, until my postwar Japanese mother finds me and slaps me upside the head for wasting all that rice and tells me to get back inside and do my homework.

 

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GREAT LOVE

 

Two precocious ants harbor an incredibly strong belief in the strength of their love for each other. With much confidence, they decide to embark upon a long-distance relationship, the distance long not in the normal ant-scale, but long enough a distance such that it might qualify as a long-distance relationship for humans. Each night each ant goes to bed with the smug and satisfying knowledge that he or she feels no less love for the other ant, than if the distance had been just a few miles closer.

 

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ANT SHOES

 

are very small, and are typically worn by the most sheltered of ants, and even then only for the first few days of its life, and even then only until they get ridiculed by all the other ants, at which point they finally develop a sense of shame and consequently make the direct connection between their shoes and their embarrassing social status, at which point it is too late and the ant will never live down the fact that he once wore shoes, much like that boy, Scott, who peed his pants one day in kindergarten, many many years ago but I still remember, oh yes I do.

 

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FEAR OF COLD

 

For some reason, I am stranded in an extremely cold environment without my coat, and starting to worry if my life is in danger. After what seems like enough suffering has already taken place, I am fortunate enough to find a house, into which I break in and find a marginal amount of relief. There is nothing at all in the house, there is no power of any kind, and there is a large pile of dead ants near the bathroom door. I am a direct descendant not of MacGyver but his old-fashioned sister, and so I end up using my Other-MacGyver skills to weave a blanket out of the dead ants, which I finish as quickly as I can, and then throw over my body, begging it to bring me warmth. What happens is that I am so grossed out at the fact of having a blanket of ants covering my body, that I quickly grow both sick and intensely anxious about the situation, all of which nervous energy serves to cause the blood cells in my body to vibrate vibrate vibrate until I am quite warm, and stay warm until the weather goes warm and I am saved from dying.

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