Each month, we publish an original poem written in response to a work of contemporary art. This month, poet Oluwaseun Olayiwola has chosen a work by Japanese artist Takashi Murakami, Rakuchū-Rakugai-zu Byōbu: Iwasa Matabei RIP (2023–24) – on view in Japanese Art History à la Takashi Murakami at Gagosian, London, 10 December 2024 – 8 March 2025.
Murakami – a popular-culture mainstay, whose particular strand of cutified chaos can be found everywhere from Louis Vuitton campaigns to Billie Eilish music videos, and a public figure who is regularly critical of the artworld’s institutions in Japan and of the West’s influence on the culture of postwar Japan – has made a career-long effort to transform how contemporary art is perceived in Japan. His latest exhibition reimagines Edo-period Japanese social painting, well, à la Murakami. Largescale, flooded with detail, everyday drama and regal gold leaf, plus the odd floral emoticon, the works ponder the scope of cultural narratives and aesthetic languages imposed on art and through time.
To retain Olayiwola’s intended verse form on mobile, please read this page in landscape orientation.
Do Not Say The “D” Word
after Takashi Murakami
Everything down I will get it.
Under, over the bridge, (I) watch the goldleaf cloud
foam(), come near, expand
the pictorial, (from) the southeast river where
horses, stitched prism
fractals, pull wooden crates
across( )the upward stream––))))) Resistance. To
the left, ( (people bathing), swimming())
), washing the lived specifics off
as the loverless chokkibune
skip
the jetty ––)of farmers tilling
the fields of earthen hells and burnt wheat(––)wind-
tinted thunder? or is it thunder-
tinted wind?)( I am done deciding––:
The calendar says it is Today, it is normal––(
(more)
the sable brush (in the computer’s hand––(
(there is no longer not a computer, never)
withering
to dust), to rainbowed static
in the long––) bright stream of endless
(. ) flat calculation––)culture; is this
what it wrote at the prime end, is this its last
stroke, passing over the hills)))) the city) who’s drained
cherry-blossomed
up-and-out whorlings)( I thought, I thought I knew––do not
(cannot) say
what will happen
to the marketsellers,) ridding themselves
of cooked stale seabass
in which the slits()
to ensure evenness of grill, froth carbon,
blackening the zelkovas that lift winglets
to ascend narrative––Show
some respect( here. )I mean it(
Do not end the living(, before I place both knees ()
() down on the mat
in front of the everything, the all, quaking))()))––
and the everything looking back at me,
drunken-eyed, anguished,
wondering(?) if I will push)))))))))the button,
disembowel, pour, the earth
with its mixed, unmixed smile of rumbles, of cute-ification ––):
that was the fault of Americans :)–– intruders
to and fro beauty, festival
of plunder –– write it down, faster ––
where the dancing camouflages the earthquake; ((((())))))))))))))
variegated fabric strewn from the walls of ourselves;
Whatever it is you are persevering you don’t get to )!…..
You get all two thousand seven hundred polycenters()
()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()(): rejoice! Do not
photograph the revolt( the poverty(
the upper garden(.) through which class’s macabre katana
cuts the balustrade––(what class is, are,
God(s)? why did you think
the petrichor fragrance would forever last? (more more)
Everything I thought I could handle. At bottom: failed ninja:
())))))–––I see you seeing, (0) entering
the story via ash.(––Outside the stonewalls–– is history. Inside?
To tell I would have to duplicate
myself amongst(..) the skullwork
fumigate((ing the land ))))))))))()
of irisdescent miseries
(& straw hats––little up)thrushing––wave) wa)ve,
w)a(v(e. it ends with me (it must)
opening a fan and an outfolding of the wind)( )( )(
threads the shi)ny monsters :D:Drooted in this
here, in this city, in this ordered conglomerate( )––who brought
order?! and whose fan is it? whose. and which of us
is in servitude’s work? 0)))0(((0
which takes the bird’s eye?(*)))) Coraline
mist(((((((()((((((((, perfume
of millions. Splendour––wear your costume for us,:D
crossing the wooden bridge
looking between our toes to see how deep––
We here in transcendence’s third, final rung––
Who’d thought we were beyond the scale of harm.
Observe economic eclosion–-it is temporary.
Gather –––– Rot–(––– Pressure(––––––– Binge. Sanitize)
There is always a diptych in the human condition.
Coincide with the world. Depart. Arrive.
Oluwaseun Olayiwola is a poet, critic and inaugural member of the Rose Choreographic School in Sadlers Wells East, London. His debut collection, Strange Beach, was published earlier this year by Fitzcarraldo Editions (UK) and Soft Skull Press (US)
