Room

 

[Room]

 

“1968 kusama lyric”

 

in a white room

with black curtains

in the station

 

you made teardrops

endless circles

goodbye homeland

 

phallic rowboats

naked dresses

tired starlings

 

endless english

softly spoken

now forgotten

 

you stepped into

such a black lake

from your high-rise

 

in the last room

hang one thousand

candelabra

 

all the mirrors

neon ladders

explanations

 

you’ll say no strings

can secure you

just beginning

 

stars out of reach

as steps ascend

the work never ends

 

all left behind

where the shadows

run from themselves

Dotless

 

Infinity Dots (1953) Yayloi Kusama

[Dotless]

 

“kusama englyn penfyr”

 

we cannot see cannot guess deep darkness

blackness offers no suggest

more dark we mark, never less

 

should a dot the eyes enter through doubtless

dauntless as though the centre,

dotless no more, frequenter

 

with eyes to see, say why and spy, day walk

cakewalk where there’s only eye

and no full stop only i

 

imagining being initialling

initiating seeing

joyful creating freeing

 

ink stained galaxies innate progressive

impressively scintillate

infinitely impregnate

 

 

Child

 

[Child]

 

“kusama englyn penfyr”

 

war is over her atoms all dotted

besotted as she is some

over every single item

six-sided rooms of mirror are this child’s

exiled universe of wonder

and small margin of terror

 

her infinity ladders disappear

reappear taking matters

in hand now clustered shattered

 

endless paintbox timeless splotch of her brush

is the crush she has with touch

whether masterpiece or botch

 

millions of red flowers glow glossy

bossy as she is powered

by their delicate hours

Pumpkin

 

'Pumpkin' (1981) by Yayoi Kusama

[Pumpkin]

 

what do we see in the pumpkin

there amidst morning tendrils

that wasn’t there yesterday

 

skin hard in the round light

where it rests on the ground found

amidst sounds of grass, wind and leaf

 

cut open the pumpkin to find

more sun firm fibre condensed

and seed chambers in numbers

 

admittedly often happily

there’s nothing to say

just us and the pumpkin out in the open

 

where mood improves

in the presence of this little planet

hard outside not that hard inside

 

but what does she see in the pumpkin

holding it tight like a child

lonely in the clinic and out

 

all you need is love

and the creation and the pumpkin

the ultimate anti-depressant

 

what in wartime she knew

was main sustenance, aid to

all thought that will get her through

 

the pumpkin’s humanness

tenderness humourousness

unpretentiousness

 

buried in clumps of compost

pumpkinseeds

return curved in great green clouds

 

only then what do you see in

the pumpkin that would be something

really would be something

 

a simple question simply answered

not simply a suggestion but

an appealing manifestation

 

plain as day warts and all

big as they come all sizes

protuberant or else squat

 

or just pumpkin pumpkin

pumpkin pumpkin pumpkin

cut from its cord for the kitchen table

 

soup prolifically squashed

roast pronouncedly sweet

pie productively sliced

 

 

 

Online

 

[Online]

 

do you ever feel spoken to

by online does online ever

reach you where you’re at

 

is online your main learning tool

what’s the first think you think

when you see the word online

 

do you wake or sleep online

does online enhance your sleep

or keep you awake all night

 

this survey takes only a minute

does online lift your spirit offer

all the spirituality you need

 

do you use the wasted time app

to measure how much online

could be spent on something else

 

when the scroll fights

when the troll bites

when you’re feeling sad

 

do you simply remember

your favourites online and

everything feels alright

 

sorry actually this survey

takes several hours

but you can pause at any time

 

would you describe your current

online presence as vacant

glancing nonchalant pedestrian

 

academic insomniac

omnivorous omniscient

psychopathic trumpian

 

all of the above

if online fell over today

never to recover would you

 

go in search of another spirituality

sort it out over a cup of tea

or 2, 3, 4, 5 cups please specify

 

return to writing letters by hand

go to the kusama show

for the afternoon spit the dummy

 

what will online do in retirement

take up shuttlecock ring triple-0

retell its carer old clickbait stories?

Dot

 

[Dot]

 

Panning back

from the dot of a long black

in its deep white cup

 

The wakeup lineup

orange dot and white and tangerine

pills for the blood and tissue

 

By day the traffic lights

dotted lines and homes beautiful dot

each advance of pedal and sun

 

By night the lightbulb

a dot in a thousand passing windows

turns square beneath the moon

 

You who are there

needing only a touch of the dot

on my phone to be here all our words

 

Florescent city

fluorescent at night city

dot on a map chaps elaborated

 

Moon soft airless white

dot amidst trees or long clouds

smooth light on the skin

 

Planet of an aquamarine

dot rising from its far horizon

in an old moonman’s photo album

 

Iris psychochromatic

a pupil of light the dot inside

widening contracting resting

 

As much as to say

the dot at the close of a sentence

is not an end but a start.