Many memories,
difficult to pick,
will still be written.
Three best friends
A souvenir photo
To take such a picture
in blue, not only in an
elegant style.
Two weeks later,
we cried, laughing
at the same time.
Picture is symbol.
You will still laugh.
I never forget
that one day
living.
———-
Sometimes, a poem unintentionally emerges through preparing for the writing portion of the TOPIK Exam.
The memory of silver is long. It
remembers fat, leathery hands
casting ingots at dawn. And the
screaming crucible that served life
plucked from death.
Sterling arcs of recollection whisper
in morning’s meekness, dangling from
emerald shadows, hanging on for a
cue, regarding us warily with one eye
open and one eye closed.
The memory of silver is long. It
remembers both she who bestowed
and she who received on that distant
Christmas afternoon, before bread
was broken under jaundiced
light.
Violet glass despondently rolls off a
negligent palm, falling upon moist
linoleum, making no sound in daybreak’s
din…shaking off all visions of times
gone by on the way down.
A conspiratorial, oily thumb and
forefinger crush yellowed, coarse
paper–page four hundred thirty
seven–fluttering in anticipation,
perceiving imminent movement
within its constricted fibers. Protein
gives tastes differently enough,
collapsing into sapped midnight
mouths, red long gone.
And so it was deciphered as that
hovering and absolute monarch,
harnessed in a gauzy gray doublet,
leered down at us…we, who only
shine half as brightly.
Tart scarlet thunderbolts, anchored to
onion perfumed lace, weigh down a
lonely table, already burdened
by glass shards and dirt.
Two for tea
One for coffee
None for breakfast
In the time of the butterflies,
before lush grapes turned sour,
aged trees shook in unison,
fearful of what might pass.
Elders with low, ferocious
voices murmured, then shouted
until they howled under a
caliginous canopy, woven from
smoke and anise seed, rising in
anger only to fall upon a traitorous
ground. Needle noses prepare to
pierce trembling flesh that may
still be perspiring in dimples of
wounded earth.
Bare is this weeping land, divested
of its plentitude, beneath our
incompetent hands–hoping and
praying that those pale peach, hazelnut
wraiths will find their way home.
Fall silent and away
a sweeping nightstick on
your slanting back.
Fall silent, voice upon voice, stamped
out near withering cigarettes, in exchange
for second-hand teardrops, cracked yet
functional, and stale baguettes.
In this way, the martyrs of our age
pave peaked avenues, gaunt as sunlight,
with unmoving, garnet throats.
Imagine yourself a pear tree,
with passionate palms upturned
to receive bashful young fruits
as they plummet from your own aching
branches.
A light drizzle of sweetness
turns into an unforgivable lashing
and your overburdened wrists
snap under the weight of the
deluge.
Broken bones beneath sugared skin.
Faith, scattered around the orchard,
never to be pieced back together.
And then, a pompous sky, naked
in its knowledge, laughs before it
cries. Moistened mud slides
over bulging thighs, making a mark,
biding its time, giving everything
to all that we are.
hooded by ashen bristles,
thin, cracked lips
press together
in distant resignation
stained with sour
blood and spoiled
claret, they must
not wander from the
window’s withering
light
for strokes of sunshine
intermittently invade
semi-hollow orbits
as they frantically
seek a footpath within
the dying day
silver agreements
become more precious
with every passing tick
at the cinema, it sounds like
a whip striking taut
leather
flying through the air
regally with pompous
grandiosity
exquisite and clean
the workmanship of a master
in this house, it sounds like
a ferocious closed fist
belting brittle bone
flying through the air
rashly with thoughtless
execution
horrifying and coarse
the workmanship of a savage
pull down the sky
tear it down with an angry fist
go ahead
do it!
wrap its magnificence around your
shoulders and scream until you
lose your voice
make it real
smear the act with the fulcrum of
disquietude while
standing on your tiptoes at the
edge of the earth
fall upon the net of lights
float
find yourself
lose yourself
sundry folly 