Category Archives: Toshimitsu Kareishu

HAIBUN RANTS OF A BLENDER

HAIBUN RANTS OF A BLENDER
Toshimitsu Kareishu

紹介

I will throw at you pulses of energy that explode into parables
Lighting up mysteries that linger in the corners of the room
They shall scuttle across the room like mice
And cause us to remember
The riddles told to us by our forebears
And we shall remember he who created us

いち

Dr. Jokichi Takamine
Japanese father of living things
In Western assembly
Introduced my mother
A diastatic enzyme from Takaoka City
To my father
A food blender from Detroit
My mother used to tell me a story
Of how I was born on a raceme
Of lily of the valley
Between a plastics factory
And a Judas tree
The flowers became pitchers in fullest bloom
Awaiting blender parts most admirably
A synod of metal flange and clock works
Boxed up and dispensed
Over diverse waters

I was born between fact and myth
East and West
History and opportunity

に, じ

The trip from Detroit to Campobello Island was a short one
Or at least truncated
By the slumber induced by packing tape and plastic and Styrofoam
Suppressing me within a cardboard womb
To be revealed to Mrs. Roosevelt
As a perfect thing for mixing drinks
Although I assure you
I can also puree
But no such thing is required
For Haitian libations
Which Mrs. Roosevelt would have made
And then would not drink

It was 1958
And I returned with her to Hyde Park
Doing much the same thing
Or nothing at all

Between rituals for a dead president
And his widow
I would dream in the cupboard
Of becoming the president of a factory
That would process chicken patties
For sixty percent of North America

I curried the money of Mrs. Roosevelt
And some folks from Sunbeam
And created a new factory that turned chicken bones
And ammonium hydroxide
Into a lovely paste breaded by two hundred workers
Then consumed from Phoenix to Nantucket

They were gummed by toddlers and the elderly
One could see a cradle-to-the-grave partnership
Just a man and his chicken patty

Curiously

I lost my love for life
I gambled away my earnings
On blackjack and poker
I even lost my prime stock portfolio
To a kid playing whack-a-mole
At a state fair
I retired to Campobello Island
And paddled around in a boat made from a painting
So much wood lathing to so much tarred canvas
A Cassatt-turned-coracle
With Jeremiad Rashbag
A yard sale Xylophone
We aimlessly floated on the water
Devoid of reason or purpose
Playing blackjack with an incomplete deck of cards
From the Seattle World’s Fair

その後

My children sleep three to a futon
And the unclean spirits hold congress
Outside my window on the 22nd floor
(“My far-flung phonies, what have we tonight?
Sleeping minds of hectic fright?”)

And in this low rent flat

We drive songs into slumber
Like a crown land commodity
For here in Nova Scotia
We give trees to the rich
And offer services from the poor
To the rich for free
It’s what we do best
At Maou’s behest