The night city, cured in purple smoke;
Streetlamps smeared with tear-soot.
Tonight, somewhere else,
From the slaughterhouse, the long, dying groan of agony.
The hidden killing.
Everyone plays the unaware,
Hiding beneath the covers,
Wrestling with clingy, half-damp nightmares.
Icteric eyes flinch from the blood-veined daily;
The mind's deep bruise, unhealed, begins to rot.
A heart mauled by countless hands,
Unable to mark its own rhythm,
Crammed with the city’s roar.
A tongue that tastes of rust
Like static on a broken radio,
Fires words, like lead pellets.
To be struck, a lapis-blood flower blooms.
Beetles gather in swarms,
To lap the sickly sweet blood.
Sleepless hands
Stab at the imminent ceiling.
The specter of a girl draws near,
And whispers low laughter in my ear.
The screeching of my teeth never stops,
Wearing the healthy ones to dust,
No time to mend the shattered breath.
In the window, cleanly quartered,
A scarlet sliver of moon is set;
The room is steeped in desolate moonlight.
Only a parched gust of wind sweeps down the street.
On such a night,
I think of you alone.
I pray to the single cosmos in the vase.
I raise my voice, and
Blood sprays from my throat,
And dissolves into the line.
【Japanese version】