The girl by the window in the empty room,

Tired eyes and a searching gaze—

Cathedral and clouds, mountains and moon—

The view invites a waiting mind to roam

Ahead to a time when thoughts

Aren’t thought alone, when arms are

For more than bending to the warp and weft

Of life lived alone, of life she’s always known,

But dreaming ahead on a quiet night

Only opens a heart to the pain of

What isn’t yet true, of time and time and time without you,

Of time and time and time. Without you.

What will we be to each other, my love?

Call me the wind,
Call me the breeze,
Call me the river
That winds through the trees,

For that is how
I’ve lived my life,
Going where time
Seemed to say was right

With no promise made
To foreign tradition
That rose from voices
With which I had no connection,

But trailing after
Ribbons abroad
That seemed tied
To some more perfect thought

And left their tails
Streaming after
As across the wandering
Minds they roamed

Leading the whispering
Listeners home.

A hunger!
For some formless thing...
Some brighter form of passion

An instinct
To be burned, if it would
bring the soul to meaning

An impulse
To move with hands and arms
To grasp impermanent heat

A desire
To be overwhelmed,
Beyond thought—complete.

I’m waiting for the rays of the morning sun everyday, nowadays.
Can’t seem to sleep before 7, not motivated to rouse before 3,
so I treat my nights like my days and let my rhythm flow free.

I have nights by the river, coffee and stars,
take a book where I go so I’m never too far,
from the thoughts and the voices that guide my reflection
as I spend my time searching for all that we are.
Dear Joe in my ears, I feel tied to no one,
no one to notice should I disappear,
but that my feet may turn in any direction
is my own certain release.

I keep waiting for the morning rays
as my sleepless eyes wander,
and listening to the voices of this world
that have seen more than I can ponder.

Help Wanted: Must speak music and hear thoughts.
Girl without touch seeking someone to believe.
Only those who love love over life need apply—
blind for love a quick trip to the door.
Refuse to look away—see beyond your own reach
for love, and she’ll reach back to you.

Looking out and not in, beyond the day’s round,
to see the hearts of others on the ground
and offer your own pride to comfort them.

If she can’t reach you, she’ll only cry again.
But no use to leave another number;
it’s the only way she knows to live.
Falling for love of those not meant,
too far by age, place, time or bent.
Part-time/temp an unlikely shot;
full-time, all-in the only real plot.

Help Wanted: Girl seeking touch, can’t escape from belief.
She knows what she wants, she knows who she sees.
It only took a moment—though she’d known you for years—
the right turn and there, all your heart revealed,
like a sight of your profile she’d missed before,
a sight of your smile left her heart on the floor.
Sincerity and kindness, fierce love for this world—
she couldn’t go back to not knowing before.

Help Wanted: She needs it, someone to restore
her heart was lost when her faith was won;
she only loves those she cannot implore.

I am made of time
and thought and hunger.
If I could douse the third,
The first two would grow stronger.

Seagull seagull in the pond,
What has brought you
To this place?

Did you fly for nights on end,
Wondering where the sea
Would begin?

Are you seeking some new role,
Grown tired of docks
And unanchored space?

Perhaps you thought
yourself estranged,
Unlike the coastal birds.

Like someone seeking Something more,
You turned your back
on the seafaring race

And flew across the charted land
For some other
Unknown place.

And landing here,
In the garden pond,
Paused for but a minute

To consider how to
Journey on and what
Life might hold within it.

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.

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

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.