Listening with the rapt attention of a sermon
to the voices of wandering souls
trapped in the repeating refrain
of cheap melodies more often ignored.

Searching in those fragile lines
for some truth the author knew
before it was packaged
and buried in the sale

Of day-to-day life
that we take for necessity
even as it hardens our brittle bones
from empty motion,

leaving the messy beating hearts we had
to wither in wordless frustration
at the contrast of what should be
and what we know continues.

Still, the slow melody of a harp
can still the rushing breath
and ease the tightened fist
of a soundless, searching heart
with no solution to the troubles.

My feeling these days is...

Somebody help,
I’m stranded in the US.
It’s been a year since I’ve been alone.
A year since I’ve even been able to think of traveling.
A year since I could begin to hear myself creatively think.
A year since my own life was placed on the shelf.
A year since I left Korea.

Like many these days,
I’ve regressed.
I’ve never been so afraid
To think of leaving again.
To think of finding my own stability.
To think of living alone.

But still I will do it.
When the time comes.

I don’t think I want anything,
Anything at all.
It is easier without.
But to live,
I will have to find a place where I do.

Oh for a way to rest.

Knowing what you’re capable of losing is a strength. But, it’s the kind of strength that hardens.

Waking up late.
Drinking coffee like it will save my life.
Sleeping like the dead with no will left to stir.

It’s not quite right; before sleep is the only time will does rise, but then in shades already bound to the certainty I haven’t time or strength to pursue it.

Do you know why they always tell you to stop and smell the flowers?
It is because flowers are nothing to do with you—
Because they neither cost nor lend;
They are outside of your world of hopes and disappointments.
And so, when the season comes when you have lost,
When the ones you did not think to question
Have become the ones who left,
The flowers still will hold their place
In separate confidence
And represent that good persists
Without pause at your temporal night.

There is an ache that resonates
In the breast that has known life—
The will to be where you are not,
The echo of pulse partly forgot...

Still, there is a danger identified
In dreaming long and vivid
Then going out on eager feet
To meet the content presented

As though the realization,
The taste that dashes hope,
Might yet replace that ideal form
With texture less than found before

And leave you not with triumph
But disappointment hollow and sore.
That danger I suppose is real,
The risk of hope bestowed,

But other outcomes too may follow
When feet are placed on stone
To chase after an idea held,
To move from pallid pace

To some more desperate footfall
That comes before the storm
That washes away from dreams
The colors unfaithfully worn

And leaves behind only what was true,
The honest shape beneath
Defined by more than your own will,
By others’ matching pressure

That lets you know your place is real
By matching even resistance
That moves you both ever ahead
Even as it redefines you.

And, if the dream you chose to hold
In carefully sheltering palms
Was placed upon some worthy sight,
Then overcome the danger

And find that what is left behind
When clouds have fled and faded,
Sweeping away the dream itself
And leaving you again untethered,

While once again immaterial,
Has only taken its name and traded,
No longer far ahead but undiscoverable within:
It belongs to you and those you knew

In matching, even weight
Becoming now a memory that you may lift and take
As you seek to find your next direction,
A stone for experience sake.

Midnight streets,
Empty seats
On a winding bus
With no destination.

Looking for meaning
In the next new town

Hoping to find something
You’ve never found—

Something you felt
Just for a moment
From a story
you hardly remember

I’ve turned away from
The light in my life,
Distracted by distant stars.

He’s carried it someplace far away
And I have left him behind.

The two, in motion,
Are blessed to meet
But swiftly again retreat

To darker paths, cooled by night,
Where the heart feels untethered.

To be content
Is to forget need
And with need the wants,

But as soon as the eye has blinked away
The memory of time content,

You find yourself
alone again
And thinking back to him:

The one who holds the light aloft
And fills the night with music.

It draws me to the pillow soft
With claws that gently cradle thought
And when my eyes have closed on life
Begins another melody.

I long for sleep as though I had
Left there some lover unrecalled
And only in blind paralysis
May steal another glance.

When darkness falls, in dark I stay
And elsewise slips the day away
So candles held may never burn
And the mind forever wander.

As to that tiny flame unlit
My soul for meaning searches
But lacking heat and air and grit
Soon stifles without purchase

And falling back from sleep awake
Must recognize the room
To understand what light it sees,
Departing reality.