Lights & Letters

Dance around
Empty chairs
One short
Don’t be
Left behind

Entangling the hills of the hood
Steep and narrow paths
Winding up between the buildings
Coating the landscape’s backs

Loud trees remind me
Of war movies
That is
All I know
Televised war

Heavy and humid
Lies the heat on the soldiers’ shoulders
For whom cicadas are singing their song

Vibrating membranes
Like the strings of the guitar
Underneath the guitarist’s fingers
Shots and chirps

Their legs and arms aching
From carrying the machine guns
Through the jungle’s emerald green
Shots and chirps

In the bushes
One is dying
And one is watching the empty space
Filled with cicadas singing their song

One is not thinking
About anything at all
No one is thinking
About the leaves that fall

Seoul, August 2010

1.
Emergency
Urgency

Patient patients
In and out
In and out

Different levels of severeness

Shattered bones
Sighs and moans

A little boy
Broke his finger
Dancing to a Michael Jackson song

An aged couple
Their gray hair silvery
Silky skin
Folded hands unfolding past, enclosed in their palms

Paper Bodies protected by daily routine
Their glassy surface
Slivered
Revealing the raw
Bare
Flesh

Reminded of
The underneath my paper shell
Sheltering the
In and out
In and out
Side

fresh shrimp and fish
fresh shrimp and fish
tell me, dear mister, what do you wish

my stomach is empty and my kids want to eat
that is the reason I want a big chunk of meat

but meat is unhealthy and full of cholesterol
and I am sure you wash it down with plenty of ethanol

my liver and diet are none of your business
I eat whatever I want, not only on Christmas

my friend, about your nutrition I couldn’t care less
but there is one more thing I have to confess:
I only sell shrimp, fish and what?..er..cress.

When autumn leaves fall

Fall remains lonely and sad
Missing autumn
Dealing with the break-up
Tearing up letters and pictures
And burning memories

When autumn leaves fall

The ground is covered in yellow and red