Expectable tracing
a light spreads a fire
a dark at night

red clouds natural science’s task of decipherment
diagrams expend texts reported by the coast

a snap, a rasp, a chatter on the seabed

Onagas castanet in Ginkgo
precursors foreshock zoology
cumbrous seismisms mackerel skies
the scenery blurs
long hairs in the north in Gamelion
Hinoko rainbow between mountains
black, yellow and violet sign a quake
forests exudate blurred scenery where bonsai lurch in parched tremors

cats leave, dogs howl, bats fly,
chickens cackle, cocks crow,
hens cluck, fish rise, crabs walk ashore,
dragonflies swarm, rats agitate,
seagulls flock, parakeets cry,

catfish shake, thrashing clamberers above ground
rocking, wobbling and overturning

pears and persimmons re-bloom, bamboo yellows, mimosa recoils in co-seismic shame

normal and shear overlap values
Heiké saunter littoral
they rush up the beach
breaking the light of observations where uncertainties are still to be met;
Caves become arches, weathered back as fast as the feet;
fringes lagoon to destruction, traversed by long swells in consequence

displacements and rotations
inter-block rocking restlessness, nausea, dizziness
camphor laurel yokes in colonnades
octopuses, honeybees and earthworms veer temblor stank

ant funkulus warp to tide and moon
colonial empires supressed by exaptation body-wave in electromagnetism
jishin anomalizes behaviour

flames bend like Krzywy Las in Amidaji.
lenses fracture, magnetometers grimace in Paris’ Années folles

Jagadis lays herein, at a glance, psychoacoustics whiskers conducting
Amos ’n’ Andy’s catterclunking through Chicago’s greystones, 20 East 127th Street, 335 Strand
Mercury ionising Cotton Club players
as Tangshan braces

A TAKEUCHI TB250–2 splinters wall plaster, reticulate venation cuts behind Banksy and Bowie,
earthworms grunting, snoring, and charming towards concrete skin

gulls and wood turtles stamp out tantrums on exposed cobbles dyed argaman by fleeing murex
macroanomalies…

[This unfinished piece is the beginning of a collection of poems based on Motoji Ikeya’s Earthquakes and Animals: From Folk Legends to Science & Lafcadio Hearn’s Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things]

[A recombinant poem exploring the connection between seismology and ethology, Japanese mythology, psychoacoustics, and Bengali science fiction]