(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
Category: My Poetry & Fiction
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: At the place where the machines and their acolytes extend human life
It has become a bit of a tradition for me to post to my blog from the waiting room at the hospital. I guess I do it partly because sitting in the hospital waiting room is boring, but mostly it’s to remind myself of the time when posting to my blog from my phone was the only way I could do it, because I was in the hospital without a normal internet-connected computer.
I am at the hospital for one of my periodic follow-ups, where they do a CAT scan and look around, to make sure I don’t have any metastasis.
Always here I get a strange feeling of stress-mediated calmness. I think the place evokes that paradoxical mix as it is strongly associated with such intense memories, traumatic but ultimately life affirming. The mental state is similar to something I feel in a temple or church or sacred-seeming place of natural beauty. . . a feeling of sublimity tempered by pathos.
I lie down inside the machine and let the acolytes read the signs under my skin.
Update (a few hours later): The signs having been read, the acolytes spoke in short obliquities of long life and long odds overcome. My earth-residency visa has been extended.
[daily log: walking, 10.5km]
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]
Caveat: Dr Hubert On The Beach at Jeres
Below is a poem I wrote recently. But its “story” is complicated. I wrote a poem with a similar title when I was in high school, in the same format: formally, a sestina, and with other (efforts at) metrical constraints. The protagonist, Dr Hubert, was the same, in the original, too – he is a character from a fictional world I had created. I suspect that in actual tone, this recent poem is more optimistic than the first version, which I long ago lost (though it still may exist in some box in my Minnesota storage unit, but obviously I don’t have the ability to find it, currently). I was more of a pessimist about humanity as a teenager than I am now, and the character Dr Hubert, in my youth’s conception, was a dystopian anti-hero. Below, on the other hand, he is more of a simple, tragic hero. Nevertheless, broadly speaking, the poem is about disillusionment. “The Collective” is a reference to the Jeres Collective, which was a failed utopian experiment within this world I’d created. I don’t think that was the original name. The similarity between the name of the collective and my own first name is purely phonological coincidence.
(Poem #21 on new numbering scheme)
Dr Hubert On The Beach at Jeres He was lost, alone. His companions were dead. Dr Hubert stood under Mahhalian skies. The man's disconsolate face had turned to gray, And the war, begun and just ended, like gold, Seemed pointless. The billowing clouds threatened rain. There was a ragged pine down the shore. A lie Had started it all. It was pointless. A lie had bloomed, flourished, been nurtured, and now was dead. Days before, with hope and optimism, the rain had relented and the typically wan skies had given way to bright explosions of gold And crimson as the sun rose. Just now, a gray Seagull spun, landed, stepped twice, and pecked at gray bits of sand, searching for insects, that might lie Beneath. Dr Hubert bent and picked up a spent gold shell-casing from the sand. Memento of dead Fellow fighters. He turned and peered at the skies But his memory only showed him the rain Of bullets that hours before, before the rain Diligently washed the sour smell of gray Gunpowder from the cold air, had filled the skies' Dome with pain, useless suffering and death. That lie Had been the false utopia promised by dead Men. Earthly paradise had been a fool's gold. Some of the birches on the hillside had gold leaves, which hung like saddened children as the rain started again finally, pelting the dead vegetation. Their white bark, damp, looked like gray Photographs. He felt tired, now. I want to lie down," he muttered. "The Collective filled our skies With hope for glory. Here in Jeres those skies Instead have been destroyed." A pale egret, gold beak flashing, lands down the beach. "Nature can't lie To us, though. I will take solace in the rain." Born among angels, having fared across gray seas, the idealist peered from among the dead. Under Mahhalian skies, driftwood damp and dead, On gold sands lay. Dr Hubert faced the gray Heavens and chose to lie down in the lucid rain.
– a sestina
One calendrical observation: I am certain that I wrote the original poem on or near November 3rd, 1982. That’s because November 3rd is St Hubert’s day, which was where the character first got his name. The reason is that November 3rd is the first saints’ day after the commemoration of all the dead (All Saints), Novermber 1 and 2. That’s a bit complicated, but I was trying for some kind of obscure symbolism. The fact that I re-wrote the same poem leading up to Novermber 3rd is thus not entirely coincidence, either. Dr Hubert is an autumnal figure.
Another note: when I went to check on Saint Hubert (patron of mathematicians, among others, which was of keen interest to my 17-year-old self, and marginally relevant to the original conception of the Mahhalian history) at the wikipedia, just now, with the intention of placing a link, I learned that Hubertus was born in Texas. This is, no doubt, a bit of wikivandalism. But it was quite humorous – I have placed a screenshot (because wikivandalism is ephemeral) at right.
[daily log: walking, 6km]
Caveat: july’s weather
This poem is a nonnet that I made while walking.
(Poem #20 on new numbering scheme)
july's weather first the streets were wet with rain and trees were swinging, wind was taking fierce liberties with scudding clouds and broken umbrellas but then the rain stopped humid air calmed cicadas crafted songs
– a nonnet
[daily log: walking, 6 km]
Caveat: Spring Cherryblossoms at Night
(Poem #19 on new numbering scheme)
The almost-full, white moon sighs. Riotous, ravenous green spring writhes, a flock of white petals flies, to resist it seems unwise.
I poetized (poeted? poetated?) that while walking home from work. The poem more-or-less follows the pattern of the Welsh poetic forms called englynion. Specifically, it’s an englyn unodl union (according to wikipedia).
[daily log: walking, 5 km]
Caveat: A Morning
(Poem #18 on new numbering scheme)
A Morning After 14 days of smog, the sun hurled itself into a sky purplish blue with spring. I am not sleeping so well there are unfulfilled novels populating my dreams.
[daily log: walking, 1.5 km]
Caveat: On the subject of grace
(Poem #17 on new numbering scheme)
A Soteriology On the subject of grace Forty-eight years passed. Each had a Christmas. But they fell away. They left a raw taste. An empty cup waited. There was no coffee. Just the cream stain showed. It made brown circles. The dawn was coming. So I stepped outside. Rhythms painted my feet. The cold earth took them. Now, small windows burn. The same sun returns. Old snow reflects fire. Later, night awaits. Trees were desolate. Dark gray branches forked. Lavender clouds flew. Magpies scolded me. Breath took the gold sky. The winter air curled. The ground was frozen. I found a brown leaf. Someone picked it up. We all want answers. Nobody will say. So give your own voice. It's metaphysics. Behold the universe. Embed the subject. The self makes the real. Grace is an ether. Grace is ungiven. There is no giver. It is yours. Take it. - (2013-12-25).
Caveat: the silence that happens
(Poem #16 on new numbering scheme)
i want the silence that happens when it's still dark in the morning to take my hand and stay with me along through the day's winds and flights
Caveat: Every Day
(Poem #15 on new numbering scheme)
Every Day All the clouds are new the trees all grow old. I will walk alone preferring it that way.
Caveat: at the crest of jeongbal hill
(Poem #14 on new numbering scheme)
at the crest of jeongbal hill the trail levels off among pines i pause no one is around (but i feel the city's there trolling the sky just beyond the trees and rocks) a nearby magpie tilts her head whooshing her blue-green tail feather as if angry or confused while a brown cicada's husk falls discarded from above the air is heavy and flat michelle's ghost touches my cheek i look around unsurprised she asks if i'm not prepared to join her (sometimes she asks things like that or follows me as if no time had passed since) no, i explain, i have things various things still to do like a fish in a deep stream she moves away
What I’m listening to right now
David Lanz, “Green Into Gold.” This song came around randomly on my mp3 player while I was walking home from the hospital this morning. It is from the album Christophori’s Dream, which happens to be Michelle’s “suicide music” – it was what was in the CD player when she took her pills. That’s likely why her ghost visited.
[daily log: walking 5 km]
Caveat: The Thing About Trees
(Poem #13 on new numbering scheme)
The thing about trees
Here’s the thing about trees: they are always trying to escape the groping gravity of the earth.
Look at them. They strain and push up toward the sky, in their slow-motion way. You can see, easily, how they are trying to escape. The leaves have no other purpose but to reach for the sky.
Sometimes, the trees even need to be tied down. You see how people have applied ropes or wooden structures to the trees, to keep them from flying away when unobserved.
You see, the trees know when we are watching, too. They know that if they succeed in escaping, they have to be careful not to get caught – no one will trust a tree, anymore, if people see one running off into the sky.
So the trees wait until no one is looking. Trees, as might be expected, are amazingly patient.
In the depth of the night, when no one is around to see or hear, a tree will succeed in escaping. The branches will finally reach and thrust with sufficient force to pull the roots free of the grasping, jealous earth, and they will rise rapidly into space, finally finding their freedom. All that is left is a small upturned mound of earth, puckered like a small wound, where the roots pulled out.
A strong wind can help, but if the weather is too stormy, the trees can be injured and then they will fall back to the brutish earth, broken and shattered.
Sometimes, after a storm, you can see the evidence of this – broken trees thrown over, as if by wind. What is not so clear to us watchers is that some of that violence is self-inflicted by the trees upon themselves, in their desperate efforts to escape the unkind earth.
[UPDATE: This is tree # -1]
caveat: view of tanhyeon towers out a window at sunset
(Poem #12 on new numbering scheme)
tanhyeon, west beyond the beds: gold gestures swept by the sun and the clouds, the window enclosed all the silhouettes of dark trees, buildings beetling against the sky.
Caveat: The Korean Cowboy
I have maybe half-a-dozen novels in progress. I have harbored grand ambitions. But I'm terrible about follow-through. All but two of the novels are nothing but vaporware, as they call it in the software industry.
In reviewing some notes this weekend, I found several "outlines" for novels that aren't even "in progress" – they're just ideas for "someday." Something has induced me to want to put these "germs of novels" out into the world – perhaps my thinking is that, if I don't get to it, someone else, some day, might want to, if they find a particular idea intriguing or appealing in some way. So I thought I might publish some of these novel outlines here on this blog.
If you run across this and think – Oh, I'd love to write that idea, you're welcome to do so. It'd be nice if you gave me at least a sentence in an acknowledgements section, but I won't even hold you to that.
Here is one of my favorites among these novels not-being-written.
The Korean Cowboy
(drafted in fall of 2010, updated and expanded spring of 2013)
Over a period of many years, a Korean engineer named Kim Yeong-cheol became progressively more and more obsessed with American cowboy culture. When his wife committed suicide and he lost custody of his children to his in-laws, he decided to take off for America to pursue his dream of becoming a cowboy. Much to his own surprise, through several turns of luck and sheer obstinacy, he ended up becoming a semi-pro rodeo competitor, billed to rodeo fans as "The Korean Cowboy."
After several years, Yeong-cheol returned to Korea, and following the exhortations of old college friends and his aged mother, he tried to re-integrate to Korean life. But he has become estranged from his children, and so he decided to embark on a rather quixotic project to bring American cowboy culture to Korea.
He started with his parents' farm in Jeollanam. He bought some horses, spending his savings from the rodeo circuit and some windfall from his father's passing, and he imported some rodeo gear.
Yeong-cheol struck up a relationship with a local Catholic orphanage, and he taught some of the boys in the area riding and roping skills. He became well-known in his area as a bit of an eccentric but kind-hearted man, and he even got to make an appearance on a human interest television show. Soon he had a small "rodeo school" set up that was in fact breaking even financially.
Unfortunately, just as he was regaining a relationship with his son and daughter, his son got murdered by a corrupt police officer, and his daughter, Hye-jin, ended up badly disfigured and temporarily in a coma by the same incident.
Because of this, Yeong-cheol embarked on a peculiar path of righteous wrath and vengeance, in a single-minded effort to expose the corruption of the local police chief and political officials. He recruited a group of mentally and socially handicapped delinquents to assist in his quest, and among them is his own bitter but highly competent daughter, whom Yeong-cheol fails to recognize due to her disfigurement.
Together Yeong-cheol and Hye-jin battled the corrupt forces of power, and ended up befriending an AWOL American GI named Ricardo Blackhorse, a Native American / Chicano mix with roots in New Mexico, who had been framed by his corrupt US Army sergeant for some crime. They were later joinedtoo, by a high-ranking North Korean refugee, a former general in the North Korean Army, who, disillusioned with the South's materialism, had decided to throw in his lot with these eccentrics.
The story ended quite tragically, of course, with a flight across South Korea on horseback and a crash and burn at the DMZ at the end, confronting South Korean police helicopters, American military police and North Korean artillery.
I suppose I conceptualize this novel cinematically, but also with elements of that amazingly great novel by Hal Borland, When the Legends Die. Imgaine a cross between that novel and a good buddy outlaws western, but set in modern South Korea. I will confess that the first draft of this outline was made shortly after seeing The Good, The Bad and The Weird, which is a fabulous Korean remake of Sergio Leone's famous The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. That movie translates the action from the American west in the post-civil war period to Manchuria in the 1920's, but I became curious as to how one could make a "Korean Western" in a contemporary setting and keep it culturally believable and authentic.
Caveat: only a moment
I have been trying to write what are called Sapphic stanzas – an originally Greek poetic form that has a long history of adaptation in English, including efforts by Hardy, Kipling and Ginsberg.
I’m not sure about the typical thematics – sapphics seem to be used for odes and narrative poetry. They are in any event considered difficult and ill-fitted to natural English rhythms, better suited to the rolling polysyllables of Greek or Latin.
Still, I think I got the metics right in this little single stanza. I like it well enough to share it, anyhow, although it’s in the category of a sketch rather than a completed work. (Poem #13 on new numbering scheme)
"A Moment." Clouds that parse the sky with their fractal, cold hands; Trees held captive struggling against the strong earth, Branches dividing, air is displaced with green thrusts: only a moment.
Something in the metrical pattern strikes me as reminiscent of Robinson Jeffers. I suppose given his background in classics, his poetry was full of such meters as these. Here are two short excerpts of his poetry, which share a theme, which is not the theme of my poem above. These are also clearly not sapphics – indeed, I didn’t really invest the energy to figure out what they might be, but regardless there’s clearly something “classical” in the metrics.
Dear God, who are the whole splendor of things and the sacred
stars, but also the cruelty and greed, the treacheries
And vileness, insanities and filth and anguish: now that this
thing comes near us again I am finding it hard
To praise you with a whole heart.
– “Contemplation of The Sword” (1938)I have seen these ways of God: I know of no reason
For fire and change and torture and the old returnings.
– “Apology for Bad Dreams” (1927)
The picture (found online) is of of Jeffers’ “Tor House” which he built by hand (in the 1920’s and 30’s) near Carmel, California.
Caveat: Some Puer Tea
(Poem #10 on new numbering scheme)
some puer tea he came to pull out some of the small silences that grew like weeds. instead he pushed some poetry into the small cracks in the pavement. the air had turned to summer and there were some bees; some birds. with something hidden behind his eyes he tasted the sky out his window. he laughed. he grimmaced. he cried. he examined his black pencil. he decided to brew a small pot of puer tea; the water boiled. he spilled some consonants, some vowels. the poem (his life) started big; and ended small. just some tea in a cup like a shell cradling orange-brown water, somewhat bitter.
This poem of mine is unfinished, but I am done with it anyway. I shall go to the doctor again, now.
Caveat: Walking. Ant.
I was composing some englynion (englyns – a Welsh poetry style conceptually similar to haiku). Most are terrible, but here are two I liked.
(Poem #9 on new numbering scheme)
my walking is like talking. stories told to the earth. old stories sing new from my footsteps. walking. the ant pushes against stone with small feet. its silent creeping alone, until finally it finds home.
Here is a picture I took the other day (a rainy day) looking toward my building – it’s the tallest one in the center in the farthest distance. I live on the seventh floor. Ilsan has rapidly become summery.
Caveat: Sons and Daughters
I tried to write a poem back on April 22. I didn’t really finish it, but I decided to put it here as-is.
(Poem #8 on new numbering scheme)
Sons and Daughters The ephemerality of the world is just a stone wall. There are blossoms on the trees along Gangseon-no. The suburban pavement exhales. The air reeks of density, of garbage of sand of springtime of buses. There are little square patterns of bricks paving the sidewalk. I see a discarded umbrella, broken, its ribs jutting among some weeds. My students exist in a dream. I have a couple hundred children, my alternately charming or obstinate sons and daughters who then each disappear after a year or two. My sons and daughters almost never say good-bye. One day they are in class with me. One day they are not. No beginning. No ceremony. A month. A year. An infinite specificity lies behind this mystery.