Ode to Sashimi (or Why I Don't Do Poems)

'Sashimi Grade' fish is caught by individual handline, and as soon as the fish is landed, its brain is pierced with a sharp spike, killing it instantly, then placed in slurried ice. This spiking is called the Ike jime Process. Because the flesh thus contains minimal lactic acid from the fish dying slowly, it will keep fresh on ice for about 10 days without turning white, or otherwise degrading. ~ Wikipedia

I was thinking only of you at the lobby (although thoughts of lechon kawali would steal some air time -- but only because I actually ate some that day and that is not a cause for worry -- a slight annoyance) and the truth of the matter is it is to you that I offer my waking hours my working hours the thought of you coming to me in unabashed rawness tasteless and yet succulent, like a fleeting dream, heady and tangible: wasabi: is pain worth remembering. I am perturbed by the possibility of never having to see you again but am excited at the prospect the challenge the chase it is me and the story of my life and a friend will say it is because I was born when I was born and maybe it is but it is you, that makes it all alright.

//I looked far and wide at this Seafood Plaza/Place/Palace (I forget, see, I was thinking only of you) and found you only at the boodle feast and nowhere else // I looked at Tokyo Tokyo but you were too few to bring me any joy // I looked and I looked but Ebizu that place with the sumo wrestler logo -- does not recognize the beauty of variety and what will I do with four puny pieces of fish//

When my father would, in my younger days, bring entire packs of maguro, sake, ika, ebi, and we would eat and feast like there was no tomorrow: me, young and impressionable listening to man stories amidst bottles of beer in the slums of Dongalo where people run through the streets with fists and knives, sometimes, in the air but wasabi wasabi oh, wasabi makes it all alright.

I hear the pain of fish, dying for me -- but also wonder in its death, for it is surely, a peaceful death - its last thoughts would have to be that of surprise and so that is what we taste, maybe, that whoa that what the fuck that frigid sheen of shock, locked in forever, in that last immortal thought, as my entire individuality runs second to the magic of tasting you having you in my mouth like something fresh, new, and unadorned.

My mind reels at the thought of you. You are, to me, memory and history and the promise of abundance; the subservience of nature for moments of ecstasy -- like murder, too satisfying to be within the bounds of righteousness and peace and well-being. I owe you my sobriety in times of terror, my calmness in times of confusion, my solidness in times of fear -- it is you, really, that makes it all alright.

Coda: And the risk, the risk, the ever-present risk, of dying of some unnameable disease some unmanageable disease meant to make me ugly and sterile and bound forever to some metal frame a bed a cot that thing they tie you to when you are sick and must die soon but of eating and going ahead anyway:

it is sexy