Kiwao Nomura
Selections from Nude Day (The Day Laid Bare)
(Translation by Eric Selland)
Parade 4
The naked day Neither relief nor comfort All is friction and discord A grating sound - loud, resounding Go, follow - give chase A parade it is. The Seventeenth Flesh comes into view. It is a string. Assuming there is
a space which could be called something like the scheme of things, it is from this space
the black string comes, wandering. Soon it stands transfixed like a wire, but thinking
this is suspicious, you throw water on it for more ambiguity. Then it starts to dance like
crazy. The Eighteenth Flesh stands on its head till it dies, and this most likely due to minor
problems. Or it turns into a spirit and spreads its wings, dreaming of its own future. The Nineteenth Flesh, at one time covered in its entirety by one face, the face now
gradually disappears, at least this is one way to describe it - those hollow eyes opening,
their subtle twitching. Now even more so you think about this - what is this heaviness,
like water pressure? From whence does it come, and how? Then the questions are
revealed like the rounded prominence at the end of a bone. Passing through hell A broken piece of blue sky hovers In the gloom Hieroglyphs of insects fly past The Twentieth Flesh is sleepy, always sleepy. Hence it makes one feel there is some
kind of depth or intelligence there, but of course there's not even a speck. The Twenty-first Flesh flies. If it did not, it would be in danger of being devoured by
the fervid boundary of its own shadow. The Twenty-second Flesh speaks - "If discovered by the female while still in the larval
stage, the male is absorbed by the female and spends the rest of its life inside the small
compartment of the womb." In this way, the Eighteenth Flesh fuses with the Twelfth Flesh and is brought into
parallel with the Eleventh Flesh and the Fifteenth Flesh, while the Twenty-first Flesh
and the Seventeenth Flesh reach a point of torsion, entering a relationship of "eat or be
eaten" with the Thirteenth Flesh and the Nineteenth flesh. At the frayed ends of the eyes I was the range, the sphere, the limit... Fear and trembling rises in the form of a tower And then collapses And again rises to a peak The day laid bare Stripped to the bone
Roadblock 4 (I Am the Threshold)
I am the threshold Without dimension Without comfort Here is my other self Made to stand on its toes While writing the character for "grave"I detect the smell of India ink Or it seems that way, I'm sure of it My other self The one who dances Between the stalks of white horseweed How far... how far Stretching all the way to the end of summer The train tracks rusted red Look One threshold overlaps another When held, there are any number of places you can rest O dancing one Fragments of sparkling faces fall All along the furrow of your spine Like a benediction And when it falls on me O dancing one You have already departed silently from the threshold And again from somewhere The smell of India ink The threshold Diligently mixes the murmur of voices with hushed silence It's only me The threshold...
Parade 5
The day laid bare Actions take hold of the human and then pass away with frightening speed Or a passage through hell What fun The Twenty-third Flesh is a mystery. It's all been packed away. (If you close your eyes
you can see the buildings collapse one after the other.) The Twenty-fourth Flesh - if we consider for a moment the possibility that it has
something we might call spirit, it would crawl slowly through the depths of the abyss,
and begin licking something like organic whispers, which have collected on top of the
sludge of time. Essentially a gelatinous substance, all of the pigment has drained off. The Twenty-fifth Flesh wears the expression of an idiot even if abused, or more
precisely, it is regenerated many times over still wearing the same expression. If you
chop it up into a thousand broken fragments, each one of those thousand particles will
likely regenerate itself. Because it is equal to the fate of the breast Metallic moss grows near the water's edge Exposed to irradiation from an intense light All... All is laid bare The Twenty-sixth Flesh is difficult to describe. It seems to have gotten the hang of this
game called existence with incredible speed, but... Forgive me Beside your dry slumber We'll set aside The Twenty-seventh Flesh for the moment. It can take care of itself.
Capable of holding up under almost any kind of burden, its metabolic rate is controlled
to the extreme. It'll live to be a hundred, but the land promised it is miniscule. "Welcome to the sheer oasis of love," says The Twenty-eighth Flesh, but it keeps its
clothes on. It's not a question of technique, or of sexual difference. It's just that its
whole digestion process goes on in plain sight. How about finding a way to make your
internal organs look smaller... Over-calculated, over-managed At the water's edge The shining of a light too intense For love
Roadblock 5 (The Zone)
I am immersed In the zone You are immersed in the chill waters In the depths of my brain Water like mercury A bloody head, a head like a honey white peach Emerges from between a woman's legs I try to push it back From the right jawbone Of my death mask The face of a misshapen infant appears Screaming, howling Love is a tornado of hunger and thirst, bearing the rawness of existence (the zone) from
breath to breath, and at once a cautionary note regarding the birds which cross the
tornado like areola (zones). Zone Zone You in your nakedness I become immersed in you You of the soft, ample, swelling flesh In the depths of my brain A tin bathtub overflowing Bitter cold water like mercury I push the honey white peach And shout Don't come out! Birth is disaster! Misfortune! I try to push it back Back into the cave-like darkness of the woman Hands, covered in blood Stop! Please stop! My own and only death mask is enough! But my cries are meaningless The infant's face comes, gradually appears Becomes more and more distorted Its nose and other features crushed Love is the banner of unwashed flesh (the zone) breathing, dancing on a fragment of
silk from the sea. And it is the blemish on the demented white voice advancing as if to
caress (zone) the other side of breathing. Birth is disaster Birth is misfortune Zone Zone Zone You are Venus, Venus returned to water Now the face of the infant Occupies nearly the entire lower half Of the right jawbone of my death mask And advances on the bridge of the nose Love is the mapping of the seminal emission of this or that person (zone), as it is
sprayed into the embryo of death's panting. And it is the slow ballad of the rainbow,
which is a joke, but is required for mapping. A brutal struggle ensues between The head, trying to come out And myself trying to push it back The woman's crotch becomes an arena Zone I kill you with an electrical charge Zone I kill you by stuffing you with gravel My death mask it must be somewhere in the frontal region Breaks open and the hippocampus splatters everywhere Then someone crams a test tube into the tight space Making a squeaking sound Love is each individual (zone) sea slug of intoxication which continues as if stitching
together the skin's winter. And it is the dark buzzing of flies (the zone) as they pass
through decorating each one of them. Collapse of the honey white peach The apocalyptic text written in blood and milk Zone You no longer speak Your body is colder than water So I cram in plenty of letters The riddle of the test tube, the squeaking sound Somebody... Love is...
Parade 6
Look - it's happening again Humans possessed By actions Oh merciful Buddha (The collarbone snaps) One continues to practice self-restraint I whisper to you, the winter of your skin exfoliates Look - Another parade. The Twenty-ninth Flesh comes into view. Its peculiar mode of
existence is like the hallucinations when some bad stuff kicks in. That's how much it
shakes its head as if it had been severed, twirling around in an absurd dance. If you ever
manage to capture it, you will notice a strong smell of citrus. Shaking its head as if it had been severed (Read the writing on the wall Japan) The Thirtieth Flesh is a balloon swollen with the ashes of existence, or the carrier of
ardor's return. When desire is fulfilled it flattens, and then waits for more ashes. It will
wait years if necessary. And at the far end of its ordeal Yet again it sucks, sucks and absorbs The Thirty-first Flesh unfolds its solitude like fins at rest. Radiating outward, with
delicacy; to pursue or be pursued; such concepts simply rain down like marine snow. Before talking about The Thirty-second Flesh it's back down memory lane - the
movie Alien, nostalgiasville! My precious little alien, shuffling around the attic, carrying
off grandmother and the others, spinning them into cocoons... Things have cleared up now, for us and the ground also The egg and loneliness, an IV and a gag See, it's all clear The day laid bare Because it is equal to the fate of the breast
Daiichi Fukushima
we told you thirty years ago now the truth comes back to bite you 20 billion gallons of hubris per hour HUBRIS should be stitched into the eyelids of us all blinded, our hell comes now in the form of water The power of a column of water rising up from the sea floor in the aftershock of earthquake: terremoto, the earth moves, cracks the jaws of the earth, they crack open and the roar of pain at dawn ruptures the containment vessel of Daiichi one, two, three, four saltwater drenches the reactor core steam vented by design and flaw plumes out east in a long pennant to reach our west coast, nothing I have no words for this yet
il Giardino Abbandonato
Chista è 'na storia
d'un piscispàda:..
storia d'amuri...
a song of Modugno's has haunted me
the song of the swordfish whose lover has been netted
the song of the émigré leaving his arid town, abandoned by water
the withered breast of his mother nursing her last child
while her first one leaves for America,
and of the moon just risen through the dried olive trees
the submerged oboe, his dead guitar
the mirror that speaks nobody's name
water, water, Narcissus's face in its mirror
the song of the black cat crushed under the drunkard's shoes
and the song of the dirt-farm fisherman who was a slave to the sea
Well, the sea will keep you honest, and the eleven men
who burned and drowned in the sea of last summer
of the last summer in Hades, were bound by the sea
by the disease that stops my tongue. Water, water,
our need for it, our love of it
is all the element in which we drown
and the fact that one day we will return to it
and be absorbed into it
is both our tragedy and our resurrection.
War is not the answer, water is.
The song of Modugno
of the man who begged Christ for a remedy to save him
from his wicked padrone who beat him with his teeth worse than a dog's
the song of E Zezi, of the eleven men and women
who burned in a fireworks plant
because that was the work that had been given them to do
and that was the work of their fathers, the work they surrendered to
or took pride in, what's the use, Christ on his cross
should be so happy with his nails,
the song of Modugno's about the swordfish plucked from the sea
whose last wish was to die with its lover.