(Poem #87 on new numbering scheme)
The big typhoon failed to reach Seoul. We just had some overcast days. Down south, the storm struck Busan. The sea stole a few souls. Up here, the sky cleared to perfect blue. A cool breeze pulled down leaves.
– a nonnet
(Poem #86 on new numbering scheme)
My tendency to procrastinate can serve me well in Korea, although sometimes it doesn't, and then I will end up feeling some regret, when suddenly I find out something's wrong.
– a nonnet
(Poem #85 on new numbering scheme)
I was walking home from work just now, and someone's extremely small dog ran at me, barking loudly. I was startled and yelled, which scared the people whose dog it was. My mood slipped, wobbled, crashed.
– a nonnet
(Poem #84 on new numbering scheme)
They say Dangun's mother was a bear. I guess she spent time in a cave. There was a tiger there, too. But he wasn't patient. So he ran away. The bear waited. A long time. At last. Light.
– a nonnet
(Poem #83 on new numbering scheme)
How many scared feral cats there are around the city of Goyang, leaping among the shrubs? Maybe not that many, but it seems to me they should be kings here because they are cats.
– a nonnet
(Poem #82 on new numbering scheme)
I was reviewing with a student the list of vocabulary. We saw the next word was "skill" - "gisul" in Korean. "Do you have a skill?" I asked. He said, "Just one skill: I can sleep."
– a nonnet
(Poem #81 on new numbering scheme)
Some landscapes of the Quattrocento - those by Giorgione or Titian - are conjured by autumn's light, in the midafternoon, when gazing at trees incidental to a vague background haze.
– a nonnet
(Poem #80 on new numbering scheme)
This one tree that I frequently see is always my first sign of fall. Just a few leaves near the top surrender to an urge to paint themselves pink, yellow, red and some peach-tinged thrusts of gold.
– a nonnet
(Poem #79 on new numbering scheme)
Blink. Sit up. It's morning. Now I'm awake. The pain of sleep fades. My body needs to move. One shoulder resists movement. I finally begin to rise. The first thing is to make some coffee.
– a reverse nonnet
(Poem #78 on new numbering scheme)
I walked home amid a steady rain. A strong scent littered the sidewalks: dawn redwoods - in Linnaean, called Metasequoia glyptostroboides. like Humboldt trees, the smell takes my mind home.
– a nonnet
(Poem #77 on new numbering scheme)
The challenge in writing is to find, like a big clump of pocket lint, those specificities which capture a reader's mind so it's glad to fall, a child laughing and leaping into leaves.
– a nonnet
(Poem #76 on new numbering scheme)
It might be impossible to see the world as if it were a song. Nevertheless, strings of words mark out our daily world, like viny hedges. Ubiquitous, poetry can't be seen.
– a nonnet
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]
