The
Open Window
When I was a student writing essays
on molluscs in the dead of night
A candle under my chair for heat
Sometimes I would open the skylight
To let the fog of my mind escape
Eventually I would crawl out too
Scramble up the rooftiles
And sit with my back to the chimney stack
Looking down on the street
And up at the stars
Karaoke
He always came home at 12, she said
Every night, she said
But, no problem –
She wasn’t a typical Japanese wife
She pointed up from her ears
Like horns –
No problem, she laughs
And rattles her whisky on the rocks
And picks the next track
They were married 40 years, she said
Summer
Pudding
Full moon sinking behind Tanzawa ridge
A great pink cheese mottled with
blue-veined seas
Now rising in Africa, where the setting sun
Is rising here – the pink light glows
On snowy Fuji’s peak, and slowly seeps
Down her dreamy white slopes
Like warm elderberry wine
Oozing through a summer pudding
Art for farts sake
In Japan on a train
Salary men are drooling
Flicking thumbing pages where
Skinny schoolgirls in bikinis
Titillate their reptile brains
The mental manga masturbators
Grin like sharks in pain
