Mifune!

We all feel the tug of oblivion ...

I went to see Rashomon at the cinema for my birthday last month, and it reminded me that I published a Toshiro Mifune poem in The Rialto going on for a decade ago. So I dug it out and rejigged it, trying to get an anagram of ‘oni’ onto the end of two thirds of the lines:

Mifune!

‘I saw a raging man.’ — Akira Kurosawa

We all feel the tug of oblivion:
black dot at the edge of the eye.
Few, though, circle it of their own volition.

One such is he, who is chain reaction
and hot (as in scorch-your-fingers) ghosty-boy
trapped in the fizzing television.

In pinstripe, in lacquer, stock-still or in motion,
wearing as crude neck jewellery
one bloodied arrow or a bag of ammunition,

part blizzard, part dog, cop-bandit-boss fusion,
beard a smear of iron filings and fury,
he rips at shadow and earth and fortification,

drags a belt of beaten silver bullion
through bristling rain to the mouth of the sky.
He’s tarsmoke. Sword a fresh-plucked pigeon pinion.

Human coruscation,
chorus of do-do-die,
hellion.