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a clarity of smog (ft. Doxent)

uploaded: Thu, May 1, 2014 @ 5:44 PM last modified: Thu, May 1, 2014 @ 5:46 PM (add)

by	robwalkerpoet
Featuring	Doxent
length	4:37
Recommends	Recommends (5)

Thanks to Doxent for the perfect accompaniment to my poem written when I first arrived in Japan in 2012 (for the 4th time.)

A clarity of smog

nine days in japan and already you’re a megalomaniac
drunk on the fame of being slightly apart.
backhome there are bushfires and The Test on tv but here
you’re in the manic phase of a bipolar New Year.

even getting off the train at the wrong station when you can’t read the signage and no-one speaks your mothertongue doesn’t phase you. a divine messenger disguised as a middlelevel clerk tells you that the train to Mega is nexto-nexto.

You’re completely alone in your ipod universe as Antony sings everything is new in the space between your ears and you walk the winter greyconcrete streets of Mega / Shikama houses & steel smokestacks beside a river tamed with cement.

refinery pipes, mega-pylons supporting arcs of cable
inscribed from somepoint above and
triangulations of scaffolding infrastructure
your artificial horizon.

you know in your bones that the sun rising red through smog is rising just for you and despite photochemical haze there’s a clarity like individual rainbow ice crystals refulgent
on dead rice stalks beneath your feet.

the day is new. those birds you pass have migrated from siberia to forage for insects between the backstreet cabbages at this precise second for your entertainment alone. you love each moment. like now. and this one now.

the entire day is unfolding. you don’t need a god
when the Universe is so perfect and selforganised.
each day dripping into the vast pool
of dayspent.

occasionally we find ourselves
at an intersection where
any choice will be
the right one.

(This poem was first published on the Australian poetry website foam:e

in March 2014. The audio is freely available. The text is ©.)