First blood.

The very first fight we won.
We with fittest tails and Cunning
pre-programmed tricked nature to relinquish
Life. Meaning became us.
Pliant walls shut in, and for the fallen
Eschewed all purpose. We eye our first Death
(If death could be so privileged
To those who have not yet lived)
or Murder, cut through the throat
by Competition’s guillotine.
‘My neck or theirs’,
We’d let the blade fall
and then pleading, desperate heroics
They died so we might live.

How costly, to say I am.
How we race, only, to teeter closer to the precipice.

Tomokii

‘I need you to be early’
The microphone whizzes
Oriental eyebrows spring-dancing
Time-sensitive like your data
Probably significant, probably…
Is that blush a tinge of sakura,
Bold Confucian brushstrokes splayed
Upon a too yellow face?

I turn, like sumo, layers of carpet dragging,
Turnstiled, to uncover common history
Drawn through the stomach, up, this
Liquid memory, straining into vapors
That featherstroke the moment
Slightly nudging, gentle
authoritarian. The patriach plays geisha,
Now mild now coquette, still binding.

Face, caned into a grimace.
Courtesy’s not normal, requiring
A few degrees of imbalance –yours? Or
Mine. Your back is bamboo and I
Willowy. Gomendasai sensei.
I think of winter, come too early,
And then the bend, and inevitable snap
Of a twig broken early morning.