事の彩度 - The Intensity of Things
Based on the English translation provided by ChatGPT
鑑賞会 - The films
form Intensity of /çi/
From the east, it blazes, along the ridge.
The sky brightens in gradients.
What scatters: ash or birds?
Fluttering down, tracing the edges
Of squares and pentagons,
Morning spreads its fire through the city.
My room ignites too, a single ash-bird
Cuts across the air.
In a six-mats theater,
Where I, newly awake, am the only guest,
A voice declares:
“They come. The Human March.
Each one peels their own skin,
Packs their guts into matching uniforms.
Humans. Humans. Look humans.
With a soprano recorder as baton,
They hurriedly chant the multiplication tables,
Line up from smallest to tallest,
And leap through the main gate.
The gate. The gate. The righteous gate.
They believe a crooked necktie means a crooked life.
(Isn’t that painful?)
At the red signal, a chain of yawns spreads.
Just across a single white line,
A crow tugs at the organs
Of what was once a kitten.
Crows. Crows. Crows.”
The world fades into that color.
Soon the window shows the night,
And the face reflected in it—
Mine. The end credits roll.
When it ends,
All that remains is the feeling
I wish I hadn’t watched it.
This foolish film, watched
With a foolish face.
And I keep watching.
ねえお月さま - Hey Moon
from Intensity of /ɸu/
You puff and smoke sunlight
And the night goes dim and dazed
Because of you
On the veranda
A faceless form floats above
Your gaze unreadable
Yet somehow
I feel you’re looking at me
Hey Moon
A butterfly's dead
By such a fine thread—
A spider did that
One death
Swells in her belly
And from it
New lives gush out, squirming
See? The ones who flee are the ones who win
What matters is
Not one life fulfilled, but how many can be made
Not a moment’s happiness, but how long life endures
Hey Moon
If all you are is big and bright
You’ll be forgotten soon
I don’t wanna look up
At a sky cluttered with noisy stars
I’m fine in the dark
As long as I have
Only the light you give
イグアナ - Iguana
from Intensity of /mi/
Iguana
When I first started living with you
It wasn’t easy
You hiss with anger
Raise your tail
Glare in refusal
And drive me back
The more I touched you
The more tiny wounds I gathered
But still
Iguana
You never used words
To turn them into wounds
May I be here?
—No need to say it
Years have passed
And maybe (just maybe)
We’ve become friends
Nudge noses
Watch, and are watched
In silence
These days
It feels okay
—Being here
不在語 - The Unword
from Intensity of /jo/
＊
Blue, baby blue, a bluish furnace lit with scarlet,
All those distant hues are called sky,
But why? When the name strikes —suddenly, sharply
The color that flew away was not the sky,
It was my own eyes.
＊
The fingernail of my index finger
Snipped off and hung in the sky:
A crescent moon
After peeling an orange
my yellowed fingertips —I say goodbye
＊
I say you.
And meet again the self torn away from me.
I say you.
The edge of the call between us, keen as a blade,
I'm saying
I'm saying you.
The pet name for the me that’s always being denied by me.
＊
A misty breath, now drifted far above my brow,
Invisible density: blue.
Shaved away by words,
down to the distance only the heart can reach.
What ceased to be me,
and what remains of me,
skyfade at last into a lucid chaos: blue.
さみしさの双子 - Twin solitudes
from Intensity of /itsɯ/
From your hand
To mine
You pass the egg of kindness
When I hold it close
It crumbles, grain by grain
What is born
Cannot be called love
Only twin solitudes
Sheltering this tiny birth
Our hands come together
灼熱 - Searing second
from Intensity of /mu/
A Body
Like flung mud
Cracked, slicked, a charred death
Turn the page
Scarlet ink swells
Pools in the flesh
Light, still steaming
Within it, the organs’ madly twisting
stops
Bones grotesquely bent
The searing second
Torn out from a dance
Read on
Pluck the skin
Lick the blood
The life burned away
You yourself
Are everywhere
ever…ware
You set the fire, didn’t you?
With that childish gesture
Now you are
Being burned away