(Poem #54 on new numbering scheme)
Time is not exactly a progression of simple events. Rather, it loops and whirls, perhaps like a falling leaf caught up in a vortex of wind skittering across our grassy minds.
– a reverse nonnet
Category: A Daily Poem
Caveat: Nonnet #28
(Poem #53 on new numbering scheme)
Korean ghosts are thick on the ground: everyone's ancestors cluster round each monument or tree. There are some migrants, too: shades that have followed a sorry soul's displacements: Michelle's ghost.
– a nonnet
Caveat: Nonnet #27
(Poem #52 on new numbering scheme)
Otorhinolaryngologists' polysyllabifications obfuscatorially institutionalize impenetrable medicalized colloquies. Doctors talk.
– a nonnet of nine words
Caveat: Nonnet #26
(Poem #51 on new numbering scheme)
I want to discuss these rice-eating rules, since, for me, rice is a problem. Pieces get lost in my mouth, dodging my broken tongue. Sometimes I will choke. Porridge can work. Starvation also works.
– This nonnet is a “response” to Jeong Ho-seung’s poem that I posted earlier today.
Caveat: Nonnet #25
(Poem #50 on new numbering scheme)
Automobiles are a kind of theme that were roaring through my childhood. My father grew up with cars. My youngest memories thrum with the noises emerging from my father's Model A.
– a nonnet
Caveat: Nonnet #24
(Poem #49 on new numbering scheme)
Last night we got a refreshing rain. so my coworker turned to me and wanted to know what kind of idiom we use to express that breath of cool pleasure in English. "I don't know."
– a nonnet
Caveat: Nonnet #23
(Poem #48 on new numbering scheme)
Some kids have a lot to say in class. Other students stare wordlessly. I want them to feel their worth, understand our topics, and become engaged. Mostly I fail. It is hard. They just sit.
– a nonnet
Caveat: Nonnet #22
(Poem #47 on new numbering scheme)
Fall can't come all at once. Fall must sneak in, catch us unawares with a yellow leaf here and a northerly breeze there. I smelled autumn's covert rustlings today: percepts tasting of woodsmoke.
– a reverse nonnet
Caveat: Nonnet #21
(Poem #46 on new numbering scheme)
That ineffable cobalt color was painting the glowering clouds. Conspiratorially, the air whispered its plans for inundation. Then I felt it on my cheek: one cool drop.
– a nonnet
Caveat: Nonnet #20
(Poem #45 on new numbering scheme)
Joy is not easily correlated with other events. Instead, it arises, as if spontaneously, immanent to the warp and woof of quotidian experience.
– a reverse nonnet
Caveat: Nonnet #19 “Sum”
(Poem #44 on new numbering scheme)
Some days feel like things are going well. Some days start well but end badly. Some days I dread but end great. Some days are smooth like glass. Some days are bumpy. Some days give joy. Some days don't. Some days suck.
– a nonnet
Caveat: Nonnet #18 “Moss removal”
(Poem #43 on new numbering scheme)
Maybe I am becoming a plant. Every Sunday I cut my hair. In the weird fluorescent light, today, in the bathroom, I looked at the floor. Surprisingly, the clippings looked like moss.
– a nonnet
Caveat: Nonnet #17 “The breeze”
(Poem #42 on new numbering scheme)
Small ripples propagate across the brown, cream-colored surface of my morning's coffee, put there by the blowing wind exhaled by my electric fan which perches in my window, bird-like.
– a reverse nonnet
Caveat: Nonnet #16 “As worms will do”
(Poem #41 on new numbering scheme)
Perhaps the ground has dried out too much. The last rain was a while ago. So the worm started a trip across the vast sidewalk, its goal uncertain. The sun's so hot. It wriggles; going east.
– a nonnet
[daily log: walking, 1km]
Caveat: Nonnet #15 “A bit of a tautology”
(Poem #40 on new numbering scheme)
Some say the world is a living thing; Or that it's a clockwork machine. But I don't see it that way. Instead, recursively, the world gives a proof of the theorem that says that we are here.
– a nonnet
Caveat: Nonnet #14 “Lo que cantó la cigarra”
(Poem #39 on new numbering scheme)
Ví que amaneció nublado pero ya al mediodía se había convertido en día de calor. Una cigarra allá arriba me cantó, "Hola, pues."
– un noneto
[Update: My friend Bob suggested I translate this into English, but retaining the nonnet form. I took the challenge:]
I saw that the morning dawned cloudy but by the middle of the day the weather had changed so it had become a hot day. Then a cicada somewhere up there sang to me "Hello, there."
– a nonnet
Caveat: Nonnet #13 “The commute home”
(Poem #38 on new numbering scheme)
Sometimes at day's end I'm exhausted. I finish work and I walk home. I feel like my mind is dust. I can't even daydream. I find some music. I move one foot... the other, heavy foot.
– a nonnet
Caveat: Nonnet #12 “Near Uijeongbu [의정부]”
(Poem #37 on new numbering scheme)
Looking out the window of the train, the stretch of elevated track lends a feeling of flying, as if in slow motion, across cityscapes which seem almost infinite... full of souls.
– a nonnet
Caveat: Nonnet #11 “Visa problems”
(Poem #36 on new numbering scheme)
I have been staying on this planet. The planet is sometimes called Earth. I just have a work visa. So, if I stop working I will have to leave. But departures are sometimes very sad.
– a nonnet
Caveat: Nonnet #10 “Not actually the territory”
(Poem #35 on new numbering scheme)
Most people see maps as simply tools, or at best, perhaps metaphors. What if a map is not real? What is it a map of? Imagination's distant spaces manifest and made art.
– a nonnet
Caveat: Nonnet #9 “Involuntary anorexia”
(Poem #34 on new numbering scheme)
Choosing what to eat is always hard. Lately, sometimes I make oatmeal. I chop up half an apple. I add some cinnamon. After I cook it, it's difficult. I need to try to eat.
– a nonnet
[daily log: walking, 1.5km]
Caveat: Nonnet #8 “Upwelling”
(Poem #33 on new numbering scheme)
The conversation began as most. I wanted to point some things out, observations and comments, some inconsistencies, in how we do things. I got angry. I ranted.... Ah, why try?
– a nonnet
Caveat: Nonnet #7 “Azar”
I’ve decided to take on the challenge I suggested to myself (with encouragement from my friend Bob) a few posts back: I will make a nonnet every day. The last few days I’ve tested, to see if it’s doable, and I have done it. So I have a little stockpile, now, of half-a-dozen nonnets. And I will move forward, and try to make a nonnet every day, and post it. I guess a side-effect of this is that I’m am, tentatively, returning to my old two-posts-a-day pattern, which I abandoned around the time of my cancer diagnosis, 3 years ago.
Counting backwards among the ones posted previously, starting with one last year, I think this would be number 7.
(Poem #32 on new numbering scheme)
Living is what we do till we die. We take on difficult questions, or we simply live each day. We love that children play. We can watch the rain. We can see trees. Then it ends. It's just luck.
– a nonnet
Caveat: Nonnet #6 “up in the trees”
Now I have made an “inverted” nonnet. I have no idea if this is a thing that’s been done before. It’s the same as a nonnet, just the other way around. Below, I drew the “blue cicada in a bottle” and originally posted it some years ago.
(Poem #31 on new numbering scheme)
Blue singing cicadas up in the trees have explained to me without using language that summer is not so bad, that it passes in a moment, that the green, breeze-blown leaves caress them.
– a reverse nonnet
[daily log: walking, 7km]
Caveat: Nonnet #5 “This House Opposes Summer”
One reason I like nonnets is that it’s possible to compose them entirely in my head. They are sufficiently compact and structured that I can hold the whole thing in my “working memory” as I work out each line. Thus, I can do it while walking, which is another pastime of mine that doesn’t always mix well with writing, since this latter usually requires having a keyboard or notepad in front of me.
I made this nonnet walking to work.
(Poem #30 on new numbering scheme)
I hate summer, because it's too hot. The sun squashes me, like an ant. The air seems thick, like asphalt. I start missing winter. I could stride quickly. I could shiver. "Ah! So cold, like a ghost."
– a nonnet.
It’s occurred to me I could write a nonnet every day, while walking to work. Am I so ambitious?
[daily log: walking, 6.5km]
Caveat: Nonnet #4 “beans”
I wrote another nonnet. My friend Bob commented that I seem to have a “knack” for them. I don’t know about that, but I enjoy doing them – they are constrained like haiku, and the constraints are syllabic rather than metric (a type of constraint I find more difficult to “do in my head”). The haiku form, nowadays, has a bit of a cliche feel in English, which these nonnets avoid.
(Poem #29 on new numbering scheme)
Consciousness Speculating about my own mind: moments of consciousness might be like little fragments of light; but no, that's wrong. Instead, like so many beans, we toss them up; they begin to fall down.
– a nonnet
[daily log: walking, 7km]
Caveat: four seasons?
A nonnet I made.
(Poem #28 on new numbering scheme)
Fifth Season they say Korea has four seasons. I think actually there are five: in mid-summer, the sky hides; and the pouring rain comes; so I dodge rivers; and more rain comes; and humid, sultry air.
– a nonnet
[daily log: walking, 2km]
Caveat: lifelong
This poem is a bit more “trite” than what I normally write. I think adding the rhyming constraint to the regular nonnet form overkills it. Anyway, it’s kind of a “throw away” effort, but in the absence of anything more interesting to post…
(Poem #27 on new numbering scheme)
Walking footsteps striding along like a song one hears in one's own mind, for long seconds, only to prolong themselves among a throng, each wants to belong plunging headlong never wrong, lifelong, strong.
– a nonnet
[daily log: walking, 6.5km]
Caveat: Just Infinite
(Poem #26 on new numbering scheme)
I didn't think the sky was so luminous But as the night was just starting I saw An unblackish sort of blue hanging there Like a closing parenthesis in some Overwrought fragment of prose, still starless. I thought the buildings were holding it up But if that was true it would be like glass, Fragile and smooth, but unmoving and cold Yet this dark sky's mood was warm and it spun Above the buildings and trees, just infinite.
– ten lines of some kind of pentameter – not really sure what this is.
[daily log: walking, 7km]
Caveat: A flash of black
(Poem #25 on new numbering scheme)
I was walking. There was a whirr of wings. A flash of black. A raven spun and landed in front of me. Some years ago I was in Japan, and I saw many ravens. So ravens make me think about Japan in the Summer. But also, I think about death. Aren't there some traditional cultures that associate ravens with death? I wonder about ravens. They are scavenger birds. Carrion-seekers. They must know about death, after all. That's why they tilt their heads like that. People seem to know about death, too. We are carrion-apes who know about death. It's a matter of ecological competence. Is that where clever consciousness comes from?
– some kind of free verse
The picture shows some ravens (crows?) I saw at Hallasan, on Jeju Island, in February, 2011.
[daily log: walking, 7km]
Caveat: Sunday Monday
I wrote these little poems. They are attempts at the Welsh traditional short poem form called englynion – specifically, the englyn unodl crwca, or crooked one-line englyn.
(Poem #24 on new numbering scheme)
Sunday looking now out the window, solid gray clouds, drawn just so - i lie down to read. let go of winter, wishing for rain, but no. Monday the puddle of water shines, the morning sun's brightness finds streaks of mud and small cracks; signs like a map's matching patchwork of lines.
These forms are quite restrictive, in the technical sense. I seem to prefer trying to write inside such constraints, sometimes.
[daily log: walking, 7km]
Caveat: Hypnagogia
(Poem #23 on new numbering scheme)
Hypnagogia The reek of butterflies and dust woke me from winter's complacent pessimism and showed with grave determination that true intentions are both made and found. Uninteresting. I put my arm out to touch the bookshelf behind my pillow and unindexed archives of better sleep unfolded into gold and copper flags. I counted seven breaths while I focused on disregarding things: body, pain, mind the myriad irrelevancies of being and that bit of twisted string, felt crouching in that spot on the shelf where I'd seen it; imagine it was another whole world.
[daily log: walking, 6.5km]
Caveat: The Vacant Lot
I was walking to work yesterday, and lo and behold, the long-lived vacant lot I go past every day was under construction. I was compelled to attempt a poem, which quickly got out of hand. I began with some metrical ambition, but I abandoned it soon enough – it’s really become just some florid prose with line-breaks, I suppose.
(Poem #22 on new numbering scheme)
An Elegy for the Vacant Lot on the Corner of Gobong-ro and Jungang-ro in Ilsan November 2015 i. While mud danced beneath the bulldozer's blades Like a partly remembered stanza by Vicente Huidobro, Or Wallace Stevens, and workmen yelled, I recalled when I had first come to Ilsan, There had been a real estate office in that empty space, I think, where garish decor extolled The virtues of Seoul's burgeoning exurban New Cities, and Yet pyrrhically represented only lowrise ambition, And by shoddy construction presented A forgettable counterexample to upward mobility, so To see that tiny deserted square of land Retaken by the hungry machines, I felt a lamentation rise up inside me, Like the regret one feels upon Realizing that someone, who was once a friend But is no longer a friend, has died. ii. Happy weeds, for many months, for many moons, Flourished in that vacant lot I walk past As I go to work in the afternoons Past the corner of Gobong-ro at Jungang-ro, Providing, for any attentive passers-by, Compelling lessons in ecological succession, as First grass loomed large like summer cornfields, and then woody shrubs appeared while unhappy Men crept out of sight among them late at night to vomit During long, festive weekends, and finally Trees grew tall like warriors amid the city's litter And the buses recklessly zoomed past Like ants bearing leaves for their queen. iii. So, seeing that, I felt sadness, But then in that instant, some rain began, Pulling down yellow and brown leaves from The remaining trees, Arriving gradually but as a comfort Like an old Depeche Mode song, Suggesting a generous ephemerality Of the sort that autumn always brings.
Here is a picture of the lot, bulldozers a-buzzing, from across the street.
What I’m listening to right now.
Depeche Mode, “Nothing.”
Lyrics.
“Nothing”
Sitting target
Sitting waiting
Anticipating
Nothing
Nothing
Life
Is full of surprises
It advertises
Nothing
Nothing
What am I trying to do
What am I trying to say
I’m not trying to tell you anything
You didn’t know
When you woke up today
Sitting target
Sitting praying
God is saying
Nothing
Nothing
Always
Knows the prospects
Learn to expect
Nothing
Nothing
[daily log: walking, 6km]