ㅁ In hospital, I realized I was dead: a ghost abroad in lands just dimly lit. I wandered past the wails of those in pain aware of only dust and aimless paths.
– a quatrain in blank verse (iambic pentameter).
Category: Couplets and Quatrains
Caveat: Poem #1983 “Slide”
ㅁ If Christmas were a country road, the presents made of ice then that would be my daily drive and really not so nice.
– a quatrain in ballad meter.
Caveat: Poem #1968 “Forty-seventh stanza”
ㅁ Kiamon ducked to avoid the man's gaze. He only glanced quickly, stuck in his ways. Once he had gone, she got up and pursued, mind overwhelmed with resolving the feud.
– a quatrain in dactylic tetrameter.
Caveat: Poem #1967 “Forty-sixth stanza”
ㅁ Kiamon didn't know what was in store. Riding the train through the night was a bore. Suddenly someone appeared in the car: dangerous face, with a notable scar.
– a quatrain in dactylic tetrameter.
Caveat: Poem #1966 “Forty-fifth stanza”
ㅁ Kiamon watched as the fields tumbled by. Moonlight illumined the snow and the sky. Slowly the train made its way down the shore. Kiamon didn't know what was in store.
– a quatrain in dactylic tetrameter.
Caveat: Poem #1959 “Forty-fourth stanza”
ㅁ Kiamon thought to herself, what a life: struggling and fighting through battles and strife. Now she could rest for a moment at least, gazing down past the old trees toward the east.
– a quatrain in dactylic tetrameter,
Caveat: Poem #1948 “Not quite true”
ㅁ Eldritch cartographers drafted the world, coastlines and islets took shape and unfurled, demons were crafted to lurk in the holes scattered about like impertinent souls.
– a quatrain in dactylic tetrameter.
Caveat: Poem #1947 “Forty-third stanza”
ㅁ Kiamon reached a decision, at last; do what was needed and take on the past; ghosts might object that the time wasn't right; they'd give up soon, and would fade with the night.
– a quatrain in dactylic tetrameter.
Caveat: Poem #1931 “Duty”
ㅁ A dog was supervising traffic, there, imperious and proud, beside the road.
– a couplet in blank verse (iambic pentameter).
Caveat: Poem #1930 “A fine machine”
ㅁ I had a dream in which I stopped my heart There was a button down beside my bed I pressed it once and that would make it stop Another touch would make it start again.
– a quatrain in blank verse (iambic pentameter).
Caveat: Poem #1928 “Quotidian concerns”
ㅁ The snow began before the rising sun, but with the dawn it petered out, as rain. I drove to town as usual, again, but wondered if I should have brought the chains.
– a quatrain in blank verse (iambic pentameter).
Caveat: Poem #1927 “A ghost in the machine”
ㅁ In unrendered forests, oddities lurk, awaiting moments when the servers sleep.
– a couplet in blank verse (iambic pentameter).
Caveat: Poem #1917 “Signifier / signified”
ㅁ What words could solve the doubts I have each day? There's nothing in these words to understand. Instead I trudge along as if bestowed with words which form a burden in my soul.
– a quatrain in blank verse (iambic pentameter).
Caveat: Poem #1915 “Morning perambulation”
ㅁ I took a walk before the sun came up. A vaguely pinkish cloud betrayed the dawn. The rain had paused to gather up its strength. A mist was gnawing trees off to the west.
– a quatrain in blank verse (iambic pentameter).
Caveat: Poem #1892 “Gangnam style”
ㅁ I took the subway into Gangnam's heart and walked up Teheranno, through the crowd, immersed in human restlessness, alone - until the dream unmade itself at dawn.
– a quatrain in blank verse (iambic pentameter).
Here is a picture of the familiar streetscape in Gangnam, Seoul, a few blocks north of the main subway station. I was here every day for a few months in 2010, when I was studying Korean language full-time. So it sometimes appears in dreams.
Caveat: Poem #1890 “Or you could just say he tripped and fell”
ㅁ The dark was absolute, obsessive, blind; it piled up like an angry ghost, dismissed, and lashing out it sent the author down till spinning like a leaf he tasted mud.
– a quatrain in blank verse (iambic pentameter).
Caveat: Poem #1887 “Meritocracy”
ㅁ Diligence doesn't result in success; luck plays a role when statistics regress: Random events and the spinnings of time; harsh distributions of reason and rhyme.
– a quatrain in dactylic tetrameter.
Caveat: Poem #1882 “How the world works”
ㅁ The world pretends by rearranging things, by moving atoms constantly through arcs, through curves of time and space in ways that cause the ghosts of complex things to manifest.
– a philosophical quatrain in blank verse (iambic pentameter).
Caveat: Poem #1877 “The ghosts of slugs passed”
ㅁ The slugs, they race across the road with hopes, expecting to avoid the zooming cars; but now and then the tires take their toll, and leave a slug in ghost form, free at last.
– a quatrain in blank verse (iambic pentameter).
Caveat: Poem #1876 “Forty-second stanza”
ㅁ Kiamon sat in the dark before dawn trying to focus her mind: where'd it gone? Time had been swallowed by efforts in vain; now all she had was the slow, quiet rain.
– a quatrain in dactylic tetrameter.
Caveat: Poem #1868 “Forty-first stanza”
ㅁ Kiamon stared at the mist and the trees. Recent events filled her soul with unease. All of reality's rules had been bent. Now she'd just wait and would see how things went.
– a quatrain in dactylic tetrameter.
Caveat: Poem #1867 “Fortieth stanza”
ㅁ Kiamon studied the map in detail trying her best to determine her trail. Hopelessly lost, she set out in the end, randomly choosing a turn past the bend.
– a quatrain in dactylic tetrameter.
Caveat: Poem #1864 “Arcata, California, 1971”
ㅁ The road is wet; the cars can make a sound evoking rainy childhood days inscribed by ancient time across the mind's expanse, that rise unbidden, closing off the now.
– a quatrain in blank verse (iambic pentameter).
Caveat: Poem #1852 “No, not nevermore”
ㅁ The sun was still a bit too low to see but dawn's begrudging fingers grasped the sky. A raven came and sat outside my room and watched me watch it staring down at me.
– a quatrain in blank verse (iambic pentameter).
Caveat: Poem #1835 “Summer’s hour”
ㅁ The summer here refrains from lasting long. Instead it stays some hours, and then moves on. Interpolated clouds extend their damp and dull suggestions lowered down to earth.
– a quatrain in blank verse (iambic pentameter).
Caveat: Poem #1829 “Thirty-ninth stanza”
ㅁ Kiamon dwelt in her house by the lake built by her grandmothers' hands long ago. Daily she walked the two blocks up the street, rode on the streetcar downtown to her work.
– a quatrain in dactylic tetrameter.
Caveat: Poem #1820 “Thirty-eighth stanza”
ㅁ Kiamon wanders the dreams of the dead, questing through mythical stories, she said. Then she awakes with a start, and she thought "moonlight's cold hands are alive!" - but they're not.
– a quatrain in dactylic tetrameter.
Caveat: Poem #1797 “Thirty-seventh stanza”
ㅁ Kiamon leads in a novel I'll write, someday eventually bring into light. Meanwhile she serves as a suffering foil, taking the place of my own mortal coil.
– a quatrain in dactylic tetrameter.
Caveat: Poem #1796 “Thirty-sixth stanza”
ㅁ Kiamon stared at the sky with distaste. Solutions she'd tried had all gone to waste. Still, she had hoped to explain her concerns. Life always tossed her these frustrating turns.
– a quatrain in dactylic tetrameter.
Caveat: Poem #1758 “Synapses”
ㅁ My past appears in fragments in my brain but fades like ghosts the moment I look close.
– a couplet in blank verse (iambic pentameter).
Caveat: Poem #1749 “Thirty-fifth stanza”
ㅁ Kiamon stared at her coffee and stirred, watching the tendrils of cream spin around. Nothing had happened in line with her hopes. Patterns emerged but the picture was vague.
– a quatrain in dactylic tetrameter.
Caveat: Poem #1742 “Fate”
ㅁ A seagull ponders fate - but pondering, for such a bird, is little more than sleep. Instead, it tastes the sea-thick, rainy air, and cleans its feathers, witnessing dull dawn.
– a quatrain in blank verse (iambic pentameter).
Caveat: Poem #1736 “Speak only to the world”
ㅁ Moods can be nebulous, days tend to blur. No one is listening, which I prefer: telling some stories to stones or to trees, even the birds as they sing to the breeze.
– a quatrain in dactylic tetrameter.