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In Love with the Universe

from Quiver by Ken Yoshikawa

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about

Hands are really hard to draw.
And memory is really strange.

lyrics

In Love with The Universe


I’m in love with the Universe. I’m talking spiritual magnetic.
Like I’m INTO it.
Like, SO INTO IT, IT’S INTO ME,
IT’S IN ME.
Like 7 years old and face first in my toes, ripping off my nails with my teeth.
Ouroboros smells like the bacteria that grows under your big toe.
I’m talking choice cheese shit.
Like $25.00 a pound, 1 second relief for anxiety.
I’m talking Diddy Kong Racing on Christmas Day:
Mom’s in the kitchen making dinner and U2’s Sweetest Thing playing on a CD-ROM.
The lights were gold.
The lights were gold.
Solid gold.

Like an angel incarnated as a magic tick hanging from my fingers, that believed that maybe I can finally crawl into a peaceful hole somewhere full of blood and drown.
I tried to find it on my mothers elbow skin, tugging like a bus handle or a bouldering grip so maybe I could climb into her heart.
But my mother, see she’s a Taurus and has good boundaries.
So the tick retreated to my knuckle,
built a castle out of calloused meat,
invited me in to drink shots of straight dopamine,
and raised its flag for ten years.

Until the siege.
In a room with a bald man and a pendulum in my hand.
We’d done this before, except for DnD using trance to taproot the subconscious for characters.
I was holding a 6 inch chain with a crystal quartz,
I just had to hold it,
hold it and look at it while he asked me questions.
If it swang back and forth it was a ‘yes’
and if side to side it was a ‘no’.
Why let my voice get in the way?
So simple.

I don’t know how tell you what I don’t fully remember.
Like the sunshine in December
Ken’s not here send back to sender,
Each decibel a step toward the splendor of surrender
Man, I see you right in front of me, an image that I render
With parallel assemblage of my fleet subconscious medicine,
thank God that you’re amazing and this shit, man.

The edifice you built in me proved parallel to Daedalus,
but this was necessary in a sense to heal the nervousness,
the endless chewed terrain in space you terraformed
in case you had to skate along the rails that you paved within my pate,
and it was great, I do confess,
but i wonder if the point was to convert my doubt to sure-why-nots
and all my nos to nothingness.

Query:
Does Kenji like girls? Left, right, back, forth?
Does Kenji like boys? All gone henceforth.

Was it nature, medication, or hypnotic nomenclature,
a bug deleting data, dejavu of no adventure,
the ever subtle use of clever methods and accessories,
of sensory subversion through the entropy of memory,
erasure of your boundaries,
a backdoor to the foundry,
until it all floods back within a reverie.

A flight that you can’t feel
The feeling you can’t change
Suggested range of healing is too strange and needs concealing.

But it worked! How the fuck did it work?
Thank you? Fuck you?
What did you put in me? What did you put in me?!

And what’s the trigger? Secret word. The lock.
The key that hacks the clock.
Undock device whose use precise makes ripples like a rock.

Heavy. No. Forget it. No. It’s paralyzing.
Fuck it. Fuck it. Fuck it. No way.
Sandbucket.
Arm’s up.
Sandbucket.
The handle, watch it go over the hand onto your wrist. It’s heavy.
The lower the hand the deeper the land.
He said sandbucket. The keyword is sandbucket.
As deep as its reach
Return to the beach.

I’m done. Break the pattern. Break the pattern.
Time doesn’t work anymore!
I’m just %1000. I’m angelic, right? I’m that God-sent kinda shit, right?
The good good. Not biting anymore.
But I’m still this piece of shit.
Kenji, be kind to yourself.
Not biting anymore.
Kenji. Be kind to yourself.
Kenji. Take this pill.
Kenjimoto. You’re good to go.

credits

from Quiver, released March 30, 2019

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Ken Yoshikawa Portland, Oregon

Ken Yoshikawa is a shin-issei/first generation half-Japanese American poet-actor from Portland, OR. He has been active in the Portland Poetry Slam community since 2014. He loves blue chicken taco trees and resents punctuation and grammar at his convenience. ... more

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