By Yoshioka Minoru (trans. Eric Selland)
Macrocosm
Though the building is made of stone eternal
It is not from the second floor on up
There are purple windows
You can see Venus’ ass
Being stroked
The peels in the pineapple salad in the cupboard
Support the spirit
High noon
When the laundry man brings dirty dress shirts
What is that painter and his dog all about
Living on the fourth floor
Below the stars and stripes painted white
A dog being beaten
I eat a hamburger
That should have its picture taken
A black man in a wash basin
From the rainy reed fields of our current situation
All the way to the hills of dawn
The Chinese girls go waving their sickles
The shore of the horse’s long penis
The hidden cotton weed
Bamboo rush
The Boddhisatva of masturbation
Today when the heart is cold and the earth is hot
Little by little they decrease
Dragonfly eggs in the water
How about a love that gnaws on the corkscrews
Of the hot lovers of August
Our bloated sisters
Give birth to twins
Is there a long cardboard tube
Our bloated children can roll around and play with
Gradually they’re picked from the field
Pink cannibals who eat
Sliced pineapple rings
Until I see a mouth that thinks
Our bloated brothers who gradually grow fatter
Place a red cloth
Over the dotted cross on top of the wood shavings
The doctor who is our father in a white coat in the midnight sun
Sits down in a chair
And begins the delivery of foreign matter
A Berkshire pig cries out
Did someone die tonight?
Below the seamless socks hung with bells
Give me an answer
About what people aren’t doing
Thinking people
All the things people are doing
Collective fantasies both good and evil
Ears that burn with ease
Mushrooms of summer
Let the blue canary sing
Imagine
A black arrow of the end
Flying in the sky
A tank that flushes
The many swans in the lake
A night that smells like iodine tincture
The brilliantly colored corpses that are printed
Gaze upon the cool scenery at dawn
Our fertile meadows / creeping vines withering
The macrocosm like a slime mold
Looking back on the multitude of colors of Takachiho Peak
Reflecting on the world of goosebumps
When the pole vault athlete
Jumps over the bar
He feels the absurd iron maiden
From Summer to Fall
After a modern woodblock print by Masuo Ikeda
Little Miss Rain with a yellow tongue
A lovely soprano bride
What is that
What to do with non-living things
Gardenia flowers
Below the wooden desk
To conceive
Summer
Death in the paradise of the sacred river
Lame summer
Blue inside the mirror
The bouncing blue ball
A turtle munching on flatsedge
Above the net of four hands
A trout shaped like the letter S
I don’t want to eat it
Dream in which I don’t want to have anything to do with the sisters
I am the question mark holding the cat
I don’t want to indulge in everything
Shave every wall
Shave blood
The love that wants to fall
The arrow that wants to bend
Water from water
The road ahead of the road
Rendezvous of eyes from one tear to the other
From shadow to the shadow beyond
Concrete things
Agreed!
Crossing the garden
A metaphysical milk delivery bicycle
Or a moth
Make sure and pee before you go little Miss Rain
In front of
People lying down and people staring
It’s embarrassing
Like a sewing machine
Occupying the bride’s territory
Vitamin blue sky
Mother mikan
Be careful and don’t spill it Miss Rain
Until the day
When she takes off her red sweater
The omelet making man
The man who makes something like an omelet
Making an embarrassing omelet
Someone in a hurry
In the darkness of fireflies
A monument with no meat
When fall comes the pampas grass waves
Little Miss Rain what are you polishing there
In nothing but your socks?
Is it a fleeting tortoise shell?
The dreaded bridal skirt on the suspended ceiling
The arrow advancing
In the direction of shrinking the circle
Go sink in the swamp
A group of old women with baby carriages
A rare purple-colored
Stop arrow
Can you see it at the same time as
The man fishing for electric eels?
The strings are hanging on both sides
Of the mysterious shoes
Solid Objects
Even in the afternoon of midsummer
They remain gentlemen
They do not pace inside the room
Dressed in frock coats
They stand erect
When the next door is opened
There will be an avalanche of dead rats
Make no mistake that’s how it is today
They leave by a separate door
A fat gentleman
With a butterfly mustache
Turns the handle of the gramophone
In order to make the hot summer hotter
It makes a squeaking noise
Now you must remember!
Broken nails / the sound of childbirth
Because they are gentlemen
They remove their formal slacks
And repeatedly cast nets from the bay window
From the dark depths of the nets
That slowly spread
The future of an error
Sticking out both its breasts
The crimson cracks in the cross
Stopped in their tracks
They hold gramophones in their arms
Flowers made of brass
Consultation meditation
Without speaking without moving
Will their intentions call in the next wave?
Toward a world without communication
On the table
A fossilized bird flies around a fossilized apple
A fossilized mirror reflects a soft loaf of freshly baked bread
Does a fossilized arrow pierce the soft neck of a child?
A time like this passes
Their filthy eyes
The muddy lion they keep as a pet
Their filthy books
What is this plasticity?
The carpet path burns in the furnace of summer
Dripping with sweat
Their hearts remain cold
As they paint one large canvas
They draw a curved line the way the bride wants it
An arrow runs along the surface
And the burning color of orange
From the flowing center
Vertically and horizontally
They reveal the secret voice of joy
Make the flesh of inner vision shine!
Autumn of the spirit of the inner ear
Floating in the lake beyond
The rainy morning of the Korean morning glory comes
Because they are gentlemen
Dressed in their frock coats
In order to exist
In a collective fantasy
They hold up sweet goldfish bowls
Poem for a Mysterious Time
In the moving train
We see
Bustling in broad daylight
Numerous mannequins with heads painted white
Candy sticks being licked
With blue and red swirls rising
Ammonia
Esoteric art
But we mustn’t be delusional I suppose
Youths with both hands placed on the floor
A beast of a mother doing a handstand
The royal road
Of gradually drooping toilette paper
It can’t be seen at night
So it is led by the milk-colored arrow
Something like meat
Goes inside its shell
That is natural beauty
A melody remembered
Why is the Chinese pillow so long
Mysterious and moderately heavy
Laying on its side
The crescent moon
A group of old women
Maternity dresses fluttering
They move forward like the needle of a sewing machine
But where are they?
And where are they going?
Our self-conscious self-destruction
The desert darkness of the world
We should be ashamed of ourselves
The modern Arc de Triomphe
Quickly it becomes transparent
The cherry pink waning moon
Grows quietly
The beautiful married woman’s
Shiny limestone cave
Touch it earnestly
And look up at it admiringly
The various square pores containing metals
Twelve dubious transformations of a chrysalis take place there
That which decays and that which does not decay
That which changes and that which does not change
Grinding the coloring match
Will we find gold
In the crack in the embarrassing ellipse
A merchant of the salt of death
Is afraid of becoming fat
A peach-colored airplane
And a peach-colored shadow
Trachoma eye
Fornication
The clinging beauty
Putting on a wig of phosphorescent paint
Marilyn Monroe’s body has shrunk
A sudden swarm of peeping people
That which decays / that which changes
In our language
The hurt
In the eternal light and darkness
The constricted existence of hemorrhoids
A Venus for use in advertising
Dahlias
Soon it will be June
Legs swaying in the car
The stone lion in the park
Is this a commemorative photo?
A black man and a dinosaur
Slowly die
Holding a carrot
Is it a dream or an illusion?
The navy flag on a waistcloth in the crowd
A woman with a chain in her mouth
Artistic gastroptosis
How corny!
Today on the surface of the raw egg yolk jelly
There was a poem printed!
The purple eyes of a premature baby
And a small metal box
Our tape runs along
Music comes forth
Buds come out on the trees
Ghosts appear
Waving ten-thousand feet of bloody tape
Sleeping youths capable of producing children
Young women entangled in suspicious orchids
The night watchman patrolling the nightscape
Its checkered pattern
Until the hot summer comes
The meandering ceremony
The peacock which should turn black
And the poster which should turn white
When will it turn red?
The holes in the macaroni in the frying pan
All of the meat is wrapped up in aluminum foil
Sewage flowing into the river
Various kinds of vegetables
So, is it finished yet?
A metal sign
The picture yet to arrive
And the time to come
Our guilty period
A contemplative Buddhist statue[1]
[1] Statue of a figure sitting contemplatively in the half lotus position, often Maitreya, the buddha of the future.
The New Modernism 