Yen around the Buddha Tree

[ukiechan]

On last holy December did it lumber into store, this giant
Virtual Buddha Tree in Johnny's Arcade World.  Four
ample limbs bore fat fig branches, and
juicy, gleaming leaves brushed the ceiling with their tips.  
A truck-wide trunk dug roots and pushed
new pinball games like Star Wars to the fore, while
faint scents of incense and immense quietude mushroomed
over wreaths of ripened greens.

It was a swell idea, this humongous Buddha tree;
having patrons rest their thumbs from grainy joystick
grips, and sip carbonated drinks until they bubble
underneath.  Relax and watch those thick boughs swing
and twitch in synchronicity, and listen to the synthesized
cicadas sing – in C-minor, when it's below freezing.  
The only harmony you cannot hear in the rustling
of foliage is the fire code violation.

Or, if you wish, hold off that greasy temptation
of a Dollar Meal at Mickey D's, chuck that change
for a Virtual Buddha Headset lease: you can catch
everything from a scenic tour of Tibetan heights (lasting
four lengthy hymns) to the latest trends on Wall Street.  See
that Buddha pining under the center of the tree?  Your coins
go to the slots where his baggy lids should be.  We accept
all denominations, but no pennies please.  

Speaking of the Buddha, that midget's quite a beast –
wring those droopy earlobes and watch carefully:
when he lifts that left palm up to a high-five position,
signaling the strange, puzzled sound of a single
hand clapping, he will issue from moaning lips
fortune cookie tips on your love-life and/or
career managing – though no accuracy guarantees
on those lottery digits at the flipside of his slips.  

In my spare time, I have fed our Buddha bits through
his hungry eyeless slits, and spooned in his rubbery hips
to bask under neon lights when those plastic
evergreens outshined the Christmas trees outside.  I
have memorized the serial codes on his weighty neck, and
pecked my name on a nearby branch in Sanskrit-like
grafitti sketch.  It was not the light I yearned, but the therapeutic
lap massages when I throw my tokens.  

All this would have lasted, if that monk had not come.  Robed
in orange overalls with age-smoothed rosary beads orienting
on a wrist, he polished ground-smudges with his straw-
sandaled feet, and kowtowed through the night from pinball
joints to tree.  But there he slipped, and from his garb
a Powerball ticket fell, and while he exchanged learned views
of stars with our favorite cosmic being, he knocked
the slumbering Buddha right off his eternal seat.  And there

the Buddha woke; from his mouth he spewed forth curses
in pre-programmed message strings in twenty
different languages, and for once those fig leaves overhead
convulsed in torturous creaks.  We did stop the dazed monk
from a speedy ascension, but could only watch lights burst
off branches in one brilliant malfunction, and listen
to the only sound remaining – the sound of spreading
yen on the floor in a tap-dancing trance in mixed Euro beats.

- ukie,
who had no idea how this came to be.

[Dracos]

That was indeed odd and felt a little awkward in style.  Having no rhyme scheme or cant that I could detect was potentially fine given the nature of the poetry, but it seemed awkward to read out loud in spots.  The formatting, reading it aloud both ways, doesn't seem to be indicitive of what should be a slight pause there (the normal end of a rhythmic cant before the next line).  

It puts me, ever so vaguely, in the mood of Shel Silverstein's stuff, but again, the line reading just feels off a bit throughout.

Dracos

[ukiechan]

Gah.

I don't have an excuse for this one.  It's a lot more prosaic than I'd liked... originally, I even debated doing this in dactyllic hexameter, just for the heck of it.  Tried to make a few off-beat rhymes here, where one part at the end of one sentence corresponds to the opening of the following sentence, like a delayed reaction when you're reading a koan and suddenly get the meaning a bit later.  

Still, though, this does look chunky, and it looks like I've gone the wrong way, going at it like a story.  Had originally justified it because to me, relations with the divine is mostly a personal account.  Having the narrator seeing the perversion of Buddhism into Mercantile Buddhism where yen is spread instead of zen and people playing Buddha instead of praying, and giving it a storybook ending where the machine is destroyed by a greedy worshipper is something that just came to me one night.  Wish I had thought of a better way to present it though... but that's what revisions are for, I guess ^^.


Thanks for the feed.  It confirmed my worries that indeed, I need to start pruning this monstrous Buddha Tree into something more sonically and visually pleasing.

- ukie