From World to World

The world they were departing for was indistinguishable
from the one they were departing.
That was how they would recognize it.
The stains of time
on things that had experienced time.
The soft embrace of light across the skin.
The places left empty
by those who would depart before their arrival.
With no feeling of adventure or achieving success,
they opened their eyes once again.



jerry gordon
1.22.06
Cafe Independants, Kyoto

The Buddha Runs the Record Store

The buddha runs the record store,
spending hours motionless
behind the counter and keeping
the landscape of saints alphabetized.

Blue jeans.
Boots.
And her hair tied up as a knot
atop her head.

The black glasses aren't
really for reading. They're fake,
for the sake of being
in the world,
where such fixtures of fashion
can almost provide
what we hope of halos.



jerry gordon
1.22.06
Cafe Independants, Kyoto

Fall

Lest you forget
the feel of wind beneath your wings
and the contagious grace of updrafts,
fall from high places.
From cliffs and tall buildings.
From 8th floor windows
and the top rung of your dreams.

Keep your feathers preened.
Tune them to the melodious plink-plonk
of music box mechanisms
slowing to a slack-spring pause
which is all the cause you need
for doing nothing.

Can falling be called motion?
Is it action to trust yourself
to gravity and clouds,
to never name your open hands,
"Belongings"?



jerry gordon
1.22.06
Cafe Independants, Kyoto

The Willingness of Ink

With almost enough silence
to hear the breathing of your mind,
to hear the strings of words
knotting themselves into a necklace of poetry--
a sutra sung for every train car
and every crack in the concrete--
I still my pen in its scratching,
to get closer to enough,
to let nothing happen
so I needn't bend my head
to the trajectory of echoes,
I needn't resist even my resistance
or hope to know.

Within the willingness of ink
to take a shape in paper,
I hear your mind
breathing
close.




jerry gordon
1.22.6
Cafe Independants, Kyoto

Passing Strangers

Three nights ago, I'm walking with a student back to the station after a lesson. We cut through a recently built stylish building--a building of window-walls, exposed escalators and transparent vertical layers where you can watch a woman look at her ass in new jeans in a beautiful mirror on the third floor while at the same time watch a couple selecting a diamond ring from a vast glass counter of dark wood on the second floor (parallel lives playing out which we passing by can watch). You know the sort of place. Anyway, the place is closed at this time of night and we're short-cutting through its central arcade. No one else it there, but at the far end another couple have just entered and are coming our way. We approach each other as strangers do, but the man stands out somehow. His silhouette is familiar. Actually, the silhouette of his hair is familiar, as though it is a helmet of hair, thick and perhaps fake but probably not fake because why would this particular "he" choose "that" fake hair should he have the need to choose fake hair. As we get closer, my eyes are locked on him, because at 40 feet off I'm pretty sure he is who I thought he might be at 60 feet. And, at 20 feet, I'm sure and trying to play it cool because I don't want to be a dick to him, even just as a passing stranger. We continue to pass each other. 10 feet off, he looks at me and an expression comes across his face like he knows me, but I assume it's because I have that same expression on my face, but x10. He's familiar to me, as fame makes a person become. I'm looking at him with the giddy feeling of recognition building inside. He almost seems to start to speak, but perhaps it's to his companion. I don't start to speak. I can't remember if I nodded a hello, a nod that two men, strangers to each other--each with a woman--might nod to the other in an empty event of architecture to indicate, "I am not here to threaten you." A gesture of urban civility, which, ironically, could possibly be viewed as a threat. I do remember he was smiling in the way that Tadao Ando smiles. The smile of an ex-boxer and builder of rugged elegance, a dreamer of delicate concrete flowers.

Yes, it was Ando Tadao and he was taller than used to imagine him.