Category: My Poetry & Fiction

(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

(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

(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]

(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