I kind of forgot to post on my blog earlier today. I got distracted by something inside my brain. So here’s a nonnet, anyway.
(Poem #75 on new numbering scheme)
I know when I walk to work each day the best route is based on timing. The intersections are slow if you miss the signals. The first light I meet, exiting my apartment, sets my path.
– a nonnet
[daily log: walking, but not to work]
(Poem #74 on new numbering scheme)
Today in an email someone asked, "How do you get from A to B?" He meant emotionally. I think there's no movement. You just teleport, like first dying, then coming back to life.
– a nonnet
(Poem #73 on new numbering scheme)
"Wait," I say to myself. "Buy it later." I'm out of butter. So for a day or two, my oatmeal has no butter. I don't know why I do this thing: my system of small asceticisms.
– a reverse nonnet
(Poem #72 on new numbering scheme)
Death. "Oh my. That's not good." She made a face. "But it's upside down." I pointed at the card. "True," she admitted, smiling. The Tarot card looked so scary. "It means you should be dead. But you're not."
– a reverse nonnet
(Poem #71 on new numbering scheme)
There is a song about Bob Dylan. Its title is "Diamonds and Rust." Joan Baez wrote the lyrics and sang the moody song. The MP3 track plays on my phone. I watch clouds shaped like sighs.
– a nonnet
(Poem #70 on new numbering scheme)
So. One day, Beowulf decided that he should probably just give up on monsters. He moved down to Italy, and rented a Tuscan villa. Still, some nights, he awoke from bad dreams.
– a reverse nonnet
(Poem #69 on new numbering scheme)
I looked up at the sky forelornly. It was supposed to rain today. There were only a few clouds. I felt a slight breeze blow. A magpie strode past, head cocked down. Just a flash: some blue; black.
– a nonnet
(Poem #68 on new numbering scheme)
I'm not a hero like Gilgamesh. Not once did I battle monsters, although sometimes I have died, journeying like a ghost through the underworld like Enkidu, that loyal, friendlike dog.
– a nonnet
(Poem #67 on new numbering scheme)
I was struck with a weird nostalgia as I walked toward Jeongbal hill. I sat on a bench and watched the people going by. The overcast sky seemed to convey a kind of empty pain.
– a nonnet
(Poem #66 on new numbering scheme)
The biggest holiday of the year in Korea is called Chusok. This year it's a bit early. "Korean Thanksgiving" celebrates harvests and ancestors, so people travel home.
– a nonnet
(Poem #65 on new numbering scheme)
No lo sé. De veras, no sé porque no sé, tampoco. Sin embargo, puedo imaginar razones porque no sé. Por ejemplo: penas epistemológicas. I don't know. Truthfully I don't know why I don't know, either. Nevertheless, I can imagine some reasons why I don't know. For example: epistemological troubles.
– a reverse nonnet, in Spanish, with a properly-formed translation into English
(Poem #64 on new numbering scheme)
Recently I read the tide's turning among linguists, who now reject Chomskyan orthodoxy. That linguist's ideas about how words work always seemed wrong. I think words' syntax drifts.
– a nonnet
(Poem #63 on new numbering scheme)
I had let my nonnet-writing slide during the last several days, but I wrote this here nonnet during a break at work, just now, to have one which I could post on my blog. It's not good.
– a nonnet
(Poem #62 on new numbering scheme)
I had never intended to age. Yet each year slyly captures me. It tends to be annoying. Nevertheless, I cope. The main thing: just breathe. If you do that, you can live till next year.
– a nonnet
(Poem #61 on new numbering scheme)
North of the Ten Freeway at Rosemead, a place redolent of regrets, honeysuckle and asphalt, I received some treatments which electrified the aches and pains which haunted my lost mind.
– a nonnet
(Poem #60 on new numbering scheme)
I was gazing up at the green trees, meandering to work one day, and that Lou Reed song came on. "What makes a perfect day?" I wondered and thought: "Not.much more than quite simply saying so."
– a nonnet
(Poem #59 on new numbering scheme)
In my most advanced Tuesday cohort there is a student named David. I think he's full of anger. When he gets a low score his face scrunches up, he shouts at me, he hits desks, he cries, "No."
– a nonnet
I made this nonnet after reading the article I mentioned in my previous blog post.
(Poem #58 on new numbering scheme)
A new rain of unfortunate ants has arrived, my fellow workers! Let's welcome them to our dark yet thriving, cold abode! Let's show them the walls! Let's move this dirt! Let's begin to eat(,) ants!
– a nonnet
(Poem #57 on new numbering scheme)
Grasping the atmosphere like despair, the humidity guards the dusk. The equinox approaches. A hazy twilight hangs. My expectation helps me walk home, awaiting longer nights.
– a nonnet
(Poem #56 on new numbering scheme)
While the sun was glaring, a cloud drifted meditatively across a hazy sky, but the cloud failed to commit to any kind of rainmaking. It felt no inclination for mud.
– a reverse nonnet
(Poem #55 on new numbering scheme)
I was walking to the hospital the other day and wondering how to make some poetry on a late summer day. I heard some crickets. My conclusion: like those bugs, I can speak.
– a nonnet
[daily log: walking, 1.5km]
(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
(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
(Poem #52 on new numbering scheme)
Otorhinolaryngologists' polysyllabifications obfuscatorially institutionalize impenetrable medicalized colloquies. Doctors talk.
– a nonnet of nine words
(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.
(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
(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
(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
(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
(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
(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
(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
(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
