a nameless slave-girl is like a little bud
a wild flower set in an arrangement of brambles and stalks
in a little porcelain vase in the center of the sake tray
very Zen - submissively she attends to them -

like a lily petal - like the corner of a sheet
cast over the edge of a bed
the loin cloth of this towel girl
kneeling bare breasted by the steaming bath
hangs in a triangle
feminine, soft as a sigh, her

eyes hung like sea gull wings on a billowed wind,
sweat bleeding down her breasts
and belly, her impassive mask of all that is Unsaid
like a female Buddha's stone head
fallen into a mist hung cascade
for age after age - no one comes her way.

the drunk madam brays like a wild ass at the
obese magistrate's every snort and laugh.
sake makes the devils that possess them
show like candles within the paper lanterns
that conceal them.
poison beads on their skin
like toads, they drool venom!

his fat throat cracks crimson, his red head yanked back!
he sprays red surprise in the old whore-keeper's eyes
and roars to his fat elephant legs
only to have them collapse under him
making a tsunami of blood and hot waves into an inundation

that washes the smooth wood planks
past the bare feet of
Girl Vengeance who waves her 7 times folded and hammered blade
of razor steel
as she unrolls in dance like a lovely whirlwind
that snaps and is broken
as the enraged she-buffalo old whore
yanks the dead man's sword free and twists to meet her
like a crocodile charging a lioness standing on the shore!