Archive for January, 2012
Hibakusha: Nagasaki A-bomb survivor and Fukushima high schooler form bond – The Mainichi Daily News.
Many thanks to Scott Watson for sharing this news story.
Nukeletter 12
[Author Nukeletter. damnedest things, the nukes say]
world heritage sites
world horror-tage sites
fifty four nukes and counting.
*****
before death pilgrimage –
for purification –
fifty four nukes.
*****
free trips to Japan.
ancient temples, shrines.
contamination.
*****
jumping Japan –
frying pan to fire –
fifty four nukes.
*****
pure Japanese culture –
cesium, strontium
plutonium ku.
*****
Shinto priests cannot
decontaminate this land –
nuke money here, there.
*****
article 9
renounces war – no more bombs –
radiation okay!
*****
[This scroll-like series of Scott Watson’s Nukeletters, written by the poet, writer, editor and publisher, is presented unedited and in its ongoing entirety here at Word Pond. One Nukeletter will be posted each successive day through the completed set of 14 to date. Beyond that, a Nukeletter will be posted as soon as it becomes available. Scott Watson lives in Sendai, Japan. All rights are © Scott Watson. Word Pond is deeply grateful for the author’s permission to share this remarkable series.]
Coming Home. (Preparing for a trip back to USA.)
give us your
huddled masses
*****
will radiation on my passport break their
machine?
*****
is it okay to bring this
contaminated body into
pure US of A?
*****
I have no gun but am I
a radiation threat?
will tough guy TSA
break my head like
huddled masses poor?
will they shout and scream
“get on your knees!” “get on the floor!”
left leg on red, right hand on orange?
will everything I say be twisted
if I swear to tell the truth
in a nation at lie with itself?
*****
go ahead and frisk me.
be sure to wash after.
sue me later.
*****
Iʼll understand if you donʼt kiss me,
hug me, touch me. this poemʼs
for you.
*****
TOO LATE
warning!
these
words set down by a
man dying may be
contagious.
donʼt read them!
*****
mother scolds a contami-
nated child for pissing in a
contaminated stream.
*****
radioactive
haiku light as air
we breathe
[This scroll-like series of Scott Watson’s Nukeletters, written by the poet, writer, editor and publisher, is presented unedited and in its ongoing entirety here at Word Pond. One Nukeletter will be posted each successive day through the completed set of 14 to date. Beyond that, a Nukeletter will be posted as soon as it becomes available. Scott Watson lives in Sendai, Japan. All rights are © Scott Watson. Word Pond is deeply grateful for the author’s permission to share this remarkable series.]
hour upon hour
a veil of simple snow
falling without reason
I feel an urgency
to risk everything I know
— William Sorlien
Haiku Bandit Society
Red Dragonfly
:
:
The white palace
white on the black lake
lingam and yoni
:
As the goddess does the god
night has encircled me
:
The cool veranda
You are boundless, boundless
but surveyable
:
The stars they’re inhuman
This hour though is ours
:
Falling I rise
Burning I grow wet
Do you have only one body?
:
Birds skimming the water
Dawn comes to my eyelids
:
Filled with thoughts
immense as death itself
the marble looms over you
:
Palaces run aground
their whiteness is adrift
:
Women and children
roam through the street
fruit scattered about
:
Flashy rags or lightening?
A procession on the plain
:
Cold and jingling
on their wrists and ankles
bands of silver
:
In a rented suit a guy
goes to his wedding
:
Clean and draped to dry
among the stones clothes
you watch in silence
:
On the island monkeys
with red asses are screaming
:
Sun dim in the heat
Hanging from the wall
a wasp’s nest
:
My face is also the sun
of blackened thoughts
:
Flies and blood
fill the courtyard of Kali
A young goat flits about
:
Eating from the same plate
gods and men and beasts
:
Over the pale god
the black goddess
dances headless
:
Heat and the hour splits open
These rotting mangoes
:
Your face a lake
smooth, without thoughts
Out splashes a trout
:
Afternoon’s gone
Lights kindle over the water
:
A rippling in
the golden plain and a grotto
Your clothes nearby
:
Over your body in the shade
I am like a lamp
:
A scale made of
living bodies bound together
over the void
:
The water sustains us
The sky overwhelms us
:
I open my eyes
How many trees were born
just last night
:
What I’ve seen and wanted to say
the white sun blots out
:
:
El Dia en Udaipur translated by Chris Gordon
antantantantant’s blog
tsunami of lies from as soon as there was anything to know.
the sound of one truth that drowns everything out roaring fluid wall that is as
high as existence itself. arisen to roll again is seabottom gunk with a bobbing
wreckage flotilla of shopping malls and meat coli colas that break into our being
interiorly undecorating everything with misery. everything earthly
whirlpools into convenience stores of science, turned and tossed,
imprisoned in cold turbulence that purges ease and relaxation.
land sea and sky are unlivable. nothing is edible–not even ourselves.
nor a drop in albatross geiger dystopia counting consecrated beef
(they’re not even called steer anymore because there is nothing
uncontaminated to navigate by–not even stars).
[This scroll-like series of Scott Watson’s Nukeletters, written by the poet, writer, editor and publisher, is presented unedited and in its ongoing entirety here at Word Pond. One Nukeletter will be posted each successive day through the completed set of 14 to date. Beyond that, a Nukeletter will be posted as soon as it becomes available. Scott Watson lives in Sendai, Japan. All rights are © Scott Watson. Word Pond is deeply grateful for the author’s permission to share this remarkable series.]
word pond 