おかあさん, いい加減あなたの顔は忘れてしまいました
Mother, I Can Barely Remember Your Face NowLyrics by Michiro Endo
Translation by w_b
Mother, I remember the rainy traffic lights and how beside each pedestrian crossing
this ovary of yours, with his mouth gaping open,
pulled out from the trash bin mementos of a sun swollen crimson;
how then a single insect would try to sneak out of there
while going in circles through 285,120 hours of darkness.
I long for those happy memories of being soaked to the skin
after I had poured over my head the miso soup that had just been served at the dinner table.
I had wished to share with someone the embarrassment I'd felt at writing all by myself
to the Autistic Children's Letters to the Editor section that my father is a civil servant,
and unable to wait it out until the end of school I had bolted from the classroom
and ran home as fast as I could,
but though I tried to hold my pee and wait for the green light before crossing
as you had taught me,
by the time I noticed that the traffic light was actually broken it was already too late, I was done.
Are you well?
Mother, I can't help it if I'm smart.
Every time I assert myself she is instantly cured of her morbid fear of a phantom miscarriage.
Women's underwear is always stained yellow,
and I will declare without hesitation that racial discrimination is the root of sexual desire.
Refreshed by my morning erection, just as if I had swallowed whole an American politician's speech,
I decided to take a look at a sacrificial sale of Vietnamese bananas,
when I recalled a story about an old geezer from the agricultural co-op;
with a freedom goddess vibrator in one hand and a red viper drink in the other,
he bought trendy jeans in Ueno's Ameyoko as a souvenir for his cute grand-daughter,
spat some rash, old-fashioned remarks about all penniless families sharing a common destiny,
then later he became a vagrant and eventually got himself killed; it's a sad story I've been trying to remember.
Are you well?
Mother, I'm not allowed to wear pants in this freezing cell.
The sound of the toilet flushing is so loud that no one can sleep,
so instead the criminals are always masturbating in secret,
and when I told the detectives in the interrogation room that I only dreamt of you,
they seemed elated as they admonished me about filial piety.
They gave me katsudon for my midday meal but I'd rather have tanuki udon,
and when I said how I despised my father,
the yakuza next to me, a Self-Defence Forces maniac, turned crimson,
flew into a rage, and started antagonizing me: "Luxury is the enemy!" and the like.
That's when I unintentionally let it slip
how I'm glad that he got what he had wanted in life then! What a fucking pauper!
Are you well?
Mother, I can barely remember your face now.
Since my bout of cystitis, I have found pleasure in cooling that part of myself with water.
I have come to hate baths; my skin will not stop peeling off in large flakes,
and I can't stand having my subcutaneous fat constantly exposed:
that is why I cried in the purple-red entryway, all alone.
Mother, I want to taste anpan one last time.
Mother, I want to taste the kuri kinton you used to make for me during the New Year.
Mother, I would love to eat some sukiyaki stuffed with pork and full of sugar.
Mother, my tastes are a disgrace to the ordinary person.
Mother, my diarrhea hasn't stopped since this morning.
Mother, I must have ruptured a blood vessel.
Mother, it won't stop bleeding, it will not stop.
Mother, Mother, I hate the color red!
Notes: I tried to keep the format as close to the original as I could but I'm iffy as hell about some parts. Not adding notes either since anything I'd write would be incomplete at best.