A beautiful day

Box spring mattress hell
Early rising sleepy head
A beautiful day

-Adam

Sunrise over Takadanobaba

I did not say it was easy to see, but if you look the sun is there. The sunrise always comes. The clouds are moving quickly. Here on the 15th floor with my desk facing my sliding glass door which leads to my balcony, I have never had a better view day after day. The freedom that is in the clouds unfolds itself before me. Freedom is being able to choose when you sleep and when you look at the sky.

Adam Markus
July 3, 2008

How most people find this blog

Most people find this blog by doing a Google search on "July 4th poetry" or "July 4th poems" or on "Marshmallow Diet." As to the latter topic, I wish such a thing really existed because I could use it. As to the former, the last one I experienced in the US was 2001. The 4th of July in that part of Japan I live in, the part not occupied by US military, is just another day. I sometimes think about doing something on the 4th, but the only thing that really occurs to me is to write poems about an America that never was and will likely not be. It exists only in my head, the debris of a undergraduate and graduate level education in political philosophy: A Socratic flâneur. Though to confess, I am a coward who no doubt would have taken exile over hemlock. Or perhaps I have done that already.

Adam Markus
July 4, 2008

July 4, 2008

July 4, 2008

This shining city on a hill
It is just over the horizon
The city is there waiting
It longs for citizens

Today the city is hidden by fireworks
On other days it is ignored
So much TV to watch and money to make
The city can't compete with crass longing

It has a higher purpose
A few will aspire to it
Maybe someday it will be occupied
But now we ignore it for firecrackers

-Adam Markus
July 3, 2008