scruta

I enjoy this kind of thing, you understand.

Nothing gives me more pleasure than this.

I’m riveted! ecstatic! rolling around in orgasmic bliss!

I have truly maximized my utility.

 

You can’t see it? No?

 

Don’t you agree that I’m beaming with sudden ebullience?

Don’t you think that my complexion is providing

all of those around me with a well-spring of inspiration?

Don’t you consider me a high-value individual worthy of future contact?

Do you think I’m sexy?

 

No.

Don’t answer that.

Your answer is already plain as day,

or as loudly bright as the harvest moon,

if that’s your metaphor.

There’s no doubt this moment was destined.

 

Oh,

I don’t want to drown you in palaver or platitudes.

No doubt you’ll provide enough of them later on,

at a time more suitable, when the spotlight is no longer on me.

When it’s on you, and you can’t get away from it.

Oh, I’ll make sure of that.

 

But until that time, I’d just like you to see me as I am.

To understand my incredible happiness,

Is that so much to ask?

I don’t claim to know where it’s going,
the gleam of the towers, the rubble underfoot,
I’m a lowly traveler on this road, staring at the heights, just above the depths

But there are moments when the light shines,
when the past and the future dance together in two
I’ll walk down this road and think:
Yes, yes I do.

Nestled inside the concrete groves, where the defunct filaments of ancient telephone wires spindle downwards like vines, that’s where you’ll find it. Underneath the roaring overpasses, where feral cats prowl through the parks bathed in blue luminescence, that’s where you’ll find it. In underground basement cacophonies where restless youths throw their bodies akimbo, screaming silent in the din,  reeling for revelation in the flashing strobes, that’s where you’ll find it. Through the afternoon alleys where wizened old figures sit on bamboo chairs, tittering with a litany of times that came and went, slowly sucking the life out of tea leaves, that’s where you’ll find it. In the ring of a bicycle bell, in the idle honk of a taxi horn, in the ping of fried noodle vendors’ woks, in the snore of a bricklayer lying idle in the afternoon, in the whisper of the trees in the storm blown winds, in the mumbles of a child working on his homework in a dimly lit hardware store, in your own breathless sigh, in that never-ending hum, that’s where you’ll find it.

Bast

Keen

It’s a little bit strange, it’s against the times

But vines above my alley hold cucumber vines

Yellow flowered gerkins sprout on electric flows

And far above the concrete, green shoots curl in rows

But amdist it all is one great giant beast

A monster of a gourd, made for a feast

Shouldn’t we pick it or do something while we can?

Or will we just let it fall? Is that the way? Is that our plan?

I do not have a ladder, I don’t even have a clue

If one did pick this cucumber, would it electrocute you?

—

“I don’t even have a clue”.

[Ferret is taking the picture of said “cucumber” in the morning when one of his neighbors, walking his cockeyed dog, sees him.]

Neighbor

Oh, very good.

[Ferret nods.]

Neighbor

Good picture!

Ferret

这个黄瓜怎么那么大？

Why is this cucumber so big?

Neighbor

哦，这不是一个黄瓜，是丝瓜！

Oh, this isn’t a cucumber, it’s a loofah!

Ferret

是吗？能吃吗？

Really? Can you eat it?

Neighbor

不能吃啊！好用洗澡啊！

You can’t eat it. It’s good for washing with. 

Ferret

哦。

Oh.

No cucumber after all; it’s a sponge!