REUNION WITH A FRIEND (IN SEOUL)

           for Leif Karlen

We entered the food tent that evening

upon my arrival…  I remember oily-plates

warming us from the late autumn chill,
or a fire somewhere, & the embers' pulse   

like fireflies in summer, when you felt

sick & went inside, & the sizzling meat,
the healthy-buzz of a couple chatting at a booth  

nearby.  Our soju came in green bottles

& the shot glasses (translucent as jellyfish
in moonlight) felt slippery in our hands,
the cool singe of alcohol jogging our brains
& this unexpected-situation, it was almost
odd not to question, this uncanny feeling
of familiarity, & a friend you had met elsewhere,

so distant it seemed now, & to find your-

self here, in the dim-evening lit by lamps

when the atmosphere almost oozed, &

the world distilled into an occasion I never

guessed would become a memory, until

evoked some instance later on, as if not

by my own volition.  I watched the dog-star

flicker, muted through the roof, & wra-
pped lettuce-leaves around slabs of
grilled-bacon.  The air redolent of garlic

& my friend focused on his soju, or what swam   

in his mind, as I let work within me

the hum of liquid-experience.  So much
we'd left unsaid, & yet a lambent ache
in the heart, at that moment of rest,

when all your life had raced by, it alm-
ost hurt to think, that life didn’t
need to be a battle…

EVENING IN TIME-LAPSE

Life came to him in vague discoloration

& as a bit cutting into stone, the

words are etched, in his mind the faint-resonances

of a time perhaps in some sense gone

& yet to establish themselves in an 

Awakening of the past, a distillation

of the places he had dragged himself from

& the sheer pain of incisive-loss, in

grey moments of spiritualized-nihilism

The campus in deep-autumns hid from

those selves reluctant to emerge

& time driven in, like an adamantium-bit, the singe

lingering in a moment past, & the

momentum that breeds in us a
new disillusion, elliptic petals drift from         

the mind’s vague-awareness, as if
to foretell of what we had least sur-

mised, the vines winding through stairwells

That lift from a fulcrum of sand, capt-

ured in a prism's refraction, the

night opens into unexpected rains    

flashing in time-lapse, & yet the tortures seem  

to lie dormant, as if waiting for

she who will speak of our unease

IN RESPONSIBILITIES OF FREEDOM

Yesterday I stood silent on the platform, waiting for chaos…   

The fires along the roadside shivered in the distance

that swam in a breath of inflection…

I watched her undress

in front of the mirror, & above, I whom she had astonished, a throb of existence

glistened with the dark-gates of freedom, the reeling masts

swollen with winds that slipped from the south.  & we  

in the famine of our times suddenly reminded of the ospreys haunting

the glass.  I watched a stranger with a pistol

pacing along the strand…

Yesterday I sprawled on the pavilion & conversed with the Gods...

The sunset splashed in the eyes of a dog lying in the

street, & the sad slow whimper of the end of an era, somehow reminiscent  

of its pain.  I saw night-birds hover above the temple,

there were a few last remnants, we thought…   

& a broken cycle lying in the gutter

where luminous fish fed on the livers

of ghosts.  I set forth… 

& stood where the sun teetered briefly on the edge, a woman in pink    

stole into an abandoned shrine.  I saw the flash of her coat trailing 

in a moment that slipped by in blaze of leaves, a blast of heat in the heart of winter… 

Three or four of us now, the sun sailing on deep horizons

of glass, the drip of light spilling over the sequence of my past…   

& the cask of musk-melons

at the station…  

Fish fed on the fragments of our memory, the nocturnal

kind, that hid-deep in the valleys of migrations     

the abysses of pain, & those hours of torture they made us endure

without quite knowing why, nor did we

ask, as some giant peered in with

an enormous eye, & we spoke in whispers

to those who would listen…

Yesterday I rose where the light dripped into

the distance, there was a deep pain in the act of waking, the dark sun

swam in the sadness of having lived, at the immense

weight that bore down on our lives, in a place    

that was vaguely familiar…  

INTIMATIONS OF A DEEP AUTUMN

Here in the quiet

& calm of a tremulous-afternoon. 

I have the acute sensation of pain, glass

Hallways, layering in a moment that dips beneath

The luminous surface, seeming almost

To respond to the presence pooled in those deep autumn

Reds, the lake mirrored in a moment’s breath

As silence, sense bursts from its fetters, a moment

Nearly running to catch up.  & once more I see

Her face, its faint translucence skimming from a place

Of absolute-truth, a pulse I’ve known that exists

In the creak of a stair, or a motion

Bleeding into stillness.  She drew a map

Encapsulating each luminary channel, each striation of her

Life, & those moments, as if remembered

For the first time, experiences she was yet to become  

Cognizant of until memory evoked the presence

Of some faint-illumination.  The days cooler

Now, the leaves turning the color of dried

Blood.  Here in the quiet & calm of a tremulous afternoon. 

I search for gateways, & those membranes

Of light, flaking away in a dream that’s

Not yet over.

THE TRANSLUCENCE OF THOUGHT

His brain was lazy at times, waking into

the mid-afternoon…  Was it the world

then, that had gone awry?  His life,

his mindset shifting in time, the subtle

changes that illumine those mid-points

of understanding...  & always the will

to act magnanimous in all things.  Yet it was

she who understood, she who refrained

ever from immediate-response, & still       

a part of her enmeshed in his psyche…

The everyday goings-on, & even those

intimate whispers.  & he, so often overlooked...     

Written-off, or misunderstood, asked          

if she had been his siren all the while,

the subtleties of her metamorphosis, 

in each swell of presence…  Yet some-

thing there, always recognizable as her, an imprint

in the flux of waking-life.  & she, even

appearing to him in dreams, or the days 

that awaken...  & still that open-eye

dazzled by the phosphorescence of far cities...   

Was it just that he was not-yet born?  

His voice unrecognized in the world

of set-possibilities, & she, always to lift          

the box with him in silent-reassurance. 

The autumn drifts by like a cloud, & he comes

at last to embrace his alienation, a state

not self-imposed, but a place we often                    

find ourselves, either alone, or with a
sole-observer…  Was it a bird, or a glint 

in distant elms?  His life, a séance,          

layers with the seasons, & he finds him-

self alive to the migrations of desire…