for haruko, utena, crona, & and every pink girly i see on the street
I have a date with a screen tonight, images
of dancing light and flat color, painted caves & wonder.
The word root of anime is life, soul, breath
The latinate dead knew how many hands
it takes to infuse a drawing with movement,
knew how many breaths, recorded or encoded
how flipped cels and tensed muscles trickle soul
how life hours condense into runtime minutes
I drink through eyes, up nerves down tiled neural pathways
I know shared dreams deeper than I do neighbors,
practice puppylove on another fictional girl.
Neotenic, sure, like pale axolotls in one wild lake
called subculture. I love the flat teeth and big heads
of our species, love not falling straight from my mother
onto ruminant legs, all lank and fear with no time for nurture.
No, humanity is a playhouse, every construct make-believe
My tribe are those who make themselves
mimetic to the imaginary, happy simulacra
My being is lightness, airborne, pretty floating signifier
I wax my hair unreal & let my reflection smile.
What a blessing it is to be pink-haired!
Aposematic, sure, we strawberry poison dream girls
gather, sapphic, in cottages, pastel
& live all senses of like: imitation, affection, affectation.
The Old resent us, sure, as the pious did Feuerbach,
as if nostalgia weren't another extrapolated god to kill,
the Good Old Days another despaired projection,
as if landlines brought one closer to the Real,
& rosegold smartphones away from God; vapid, satanic.
We collect godless miracles: candyfloss and dandelion
Plush totems, witch rituals, zodiac and tarot
Lovecore, fairykei, light red joy.
Everything is magic here, if one lets it