The Little Dew

 

Hae.mi, with the mood for loving kindness

I fall upon thee, as the last violin concerto

From some former life, which I cannot name

I copy the Korean scripture, as if it was known to me

Hae.mi, there is no life worth living, but the one

Not thine, not mine, but something else

Reminded from a child’s face, I linger there for long

Unable to remember the rapture then, of living

Of knowing with any certainty, anything

I am trapped between seasons aware of my own mortality

With a holy assembly of symbols, copied by time imperfectly

There’s no original art to this loneliness, only a kind of death

No God but a scattered Universe of galaxies, points of light

That tremble faster than I can move, Hae.mi, that’s it

You have surrounded me like water, like air, like perfume

And I am left with nothing but the memory of own imagination

That softly whispers without reply, in darkness, in the night

Where we cannot sleep and cannot name that thing between

The hours that are not tame, so sleek and pearly like the rain

Hae.mi, I’m lost to oracles and harmonics of melodic Korean

Without choice fruit, but the power to love in my own way.

The Focus of my Little Prayers

I started early, took my dog
And visited the sea of poems
There in the basement of dreams
I found the lilacs staring back at me
I was impressed by the melody

How the sea withdrew in felicity
There was no turning back, it was set
The moon waltzed above my head

And I like mortals swooned
On the page of my youth
Where slow-motion still loved
The quietness distilled
From silence of the dove

And the summer made me beautiful
Inside, to protect me from the dying
Change was enhanced in song

Through sequestered scattered afternoons
And I was as much, my own sun
As the light escapes across the white
Across the wet throngs of spring
To be a poet of all the things we might become

Enlarging loneliness, with an inner smile
Finding joy in emptiness, that’s what
I know best, and it’s how I’ve survived

These books of bronze and blaze
And haloes of another time
I’ve felt the wizard suns
From distant eyes and praised
It’s all I have to bring today

All I am is me, and it’s a meadow wide
And it’s a storm’s encircling pride
And in my heart there is no setting or rising
There just lives a poem, that cannot die.

God employs several translators #poem #wordsmatter #blog

God employs several translators

More than kisses, letters
Alphabets of musings, mingled souls
I to writers, for writers, must watch
The scripts are for minds
Such as them, and verse

Like love built on beauty
Soon beauty dies, we have but
One small voice, one timid note of Spring
These poems be it said
Were as my own personal serenity of heaven
ii
That drip, drop, sunsets in my mind
To bathe in harmless greatness
With enlightenment, nature’s masterpieces
May your words, be thine own palace
Thy own lover’s make, repeat

These mantras that God employs
In us, we are but translators, preachers
Of the doctrine of the universe
But I do nothing upon myself
Yet I am my own celebrator
iii
Since you would read none of me
I will bury my freedom here
In symbols of pleasure derived
And delivered solely unto me
For myself as kisses, letters

Alphabets of song and ruin
Pleasure diversified, words not ignored
For God’s sake do not hold your tongue
But speak your part to the world’s
Brittle make, not often is a poet born

The days will break, but not thy heart
And a thousand poems be born form thy pen.

A Pilot from Uncommon Language

Freedom in Obscurity

I never imagined I’d experience
The repetition of experience
As pure freedom
The inner grammar

Is the failure to criticize
I am walking rapidly
In the slow-motion

From death to dream
To birth again, to be a poet
Is to obey letters of water
Powers of lucidity

Discovered in surrender
I never imagined I’d experience
Freedom in self-limitation

In the simple twilight of
The same landscape
I found the underbelly of genius
Where I reached the lines

I was supposed to (have)
The drowsy nerve of soul
Where all pleading stops.

Free association in Red-ness

From the sneak peak to the Novel, Red, by EJ Koh.

 

Koh-Catharsis Diaries 1

A brief study in the

Implications of literary angels:

Pause and follow the direction

Of the innocence and passion

Of the birth of language

Of the pangs of poetics

It’s our sanctuary of hope

It may be disobedient to become a writer

But if it’s our calling, is it not

Our moral obligation to oblige

The inner universe in us bursting forth?

It’s where the hero’s journey

Became the writer’s journey

Alchemy of lonely years

Lonely years that were not truly lonely

Like an orphan from another country

We left behind traditions to pursue

With pause, deliberation, a lifetime of editing

Translating, giving speeches, marketing

With only the barest silver light

Of recognition from the sun outside

Like the attempt to piece together

All the things that occurred in our psyche

Without success, we were doomed

Trapped in the fiction of our own myth

Like a journal of Sera and Azel

Unending, serpent biting its own tail

Experience the Guru, Sera

Youth the dreamer, Azel

The Koh effect implied objectivity

A truth that was not Justice when there was none

A magical realism of our bone-split

Rain covered tears, the vision that

Encapsulated our prison room

Untold labor of conscious hallucination

The way eyes flit away in internal direction

When the shaman wakes the brain

These I have seen, these have I witnessed

A trinity of Spirit, Earth and Wake

And the lost sense of no-time in the dream

The dream that was our life

The surrealism of the spirit that

Liked to study our human past

Dissect it for significant moments

Summarize the way memory plotted inaccurately

Like tear-stains on letters from mother

It was a lottery of bright moments, pale

In the forgiveness that altered them

The primitive familiarity of the search

For belonging, in an anonymous modern world

Full of condemnation, virile self-criticism

Waging wars of inner doubt

Mover, spirits, humans, animals, planets

The blatent hierarchy fostered responsibility

Consciousness required us to rebel

Gendered pods took on ethnic-matter

Race became part of snickering identity

Identity became a frame of reference

One glowing figure in our own night

Author.

– EJ Koh

Learning to Have Nothing

To Summon the Complete surrender of love here

I have to summon up desire day-to-day
Not to do what I do, or be who I am
But, to become an unexpected
Friend with desire, I don’t like

To recognize my own needs
I’m not comfortable
Imposing them upon the world
I eat for sustenance

I have sex for bonding
I write to experience beauty
I have to summon up desire day-to-day
I don’t require much money

To be happy, I don’t have literary friends
Okay, that’s maybe a problem
Should I desire to network, I’m quite inept?
I have to summon up the desire day-to-day

I have to remind myself, you’re still
A person and even if you have nothing
I’ve never possessed much, not even goals
I experienced all this like a child

And on special days, a bit of a child
Remains to wonder at all that I’ve
Set my soul upon, all that I’m giving up
As if all must be fair, or as if

Sacrifice wasn’t part of ordinary living
I have to summon up desire day-to-day
To remind myself I’m separate from you
So I do my own thing, you remind me to have goals
I have to summon up courage, time-to-time
To give myself time to ripen, what’s the hurry
The journey encompasses all my desires anyway.

Translations before Novels

Caution & Awe

I would rather steer a song into flowers
than see your past self hurt, witness your regret
Over drugs or the years before novels
Bring me your hoodie intensity

Your tendency to be unable to hold your bladder
I want the all of you, the soul
Of the immigrant who translated Korean
In her bedroom as a reminder of who she is

Let’s not eat dinner, let’s create
Let’s accept love in what we do
Without any exchange, barter, trade
I know how it feels when a mother leaves

I would rather be an archaeologist
Of the human psyche than a lot of things
Where our fossil memory is connected
Strangely to our ancestors, I sometimes wonder

Will I even have direct decedents
Or only students of my mind , if that
There is no writing to be done, without
The commitment, honesty and labour

Of the thriving voice within, it knows
The epitaphs are made to be combined with flowers
You were the kind of flower whose
Fragrance lingered, enough for me

To proceed with utmost caution and awe
In my own translations of your poetic voice.

Black Swan Job Application

Black Swan Job Application
(Qualities to be a Writer)

I’ve come to recognize the synopsis
For the job, writers wanted!
Ability to isolate yourself for the cause
Being okay with alone time

Being receptive to criticism
Intrinsic motivation to explore
Narratives, boundaries, create beauty
Ability to withstand rejection

Talent for creating opportunities
Out of imaginary characters
Willingness to network with others in the craft
Perfectionism in editing and reworking

Old content, to update content and to
Explore themes for self-defining new content
Asking tough questions about one’s own identity
Gender, ethnicity, social-class, family psychology

Enjoyment of reading books, a lot of books
Devouring libraries, workshops, ceremonies
Rites of passage, ability to withstand
Years require to obtain Masters in Fine Arts

Creating writing certificates, rather important here
Explorations of own style to the point of
Exposition of vulnerability, masochism and
Notable ventures into new literary territories

Must be willing to change and use own imagination
With ultimate soul-breaking investment
For greatness, fame, poetic ecstasy, first-hand novels
Scripts, blog posts, extreme loneliness in the pursuit
Of what you love, only apply if serious.

To a Translator of Korean Poetry

To a Translator of Korean Poetry

We wanted to be writers
Cult of the amateurs and all
We wanted to witness other writers
In the social equation of

The reciprocity of our art
But we were timid, at first
Haunted by the prizes
That you won of contests

I didn’t enter, would never
Throwing ourselves out there
Invisible, pretending, unnoticeable
A snippet, a fragment, a leaf

Blowing in the virtual wind
We were like a tweet waiting to happen
And I watched the game of you
Shouting from the rooftops

About language on much smaller level
Of the ingredients for memories
That can be used as expositions
Can a soul be excited to tears?

That way time goes by without justification
And how we feel our inner child
Awake, but no longer afraid
Of the dark or the big bad dangerous world

We’ve come to call New York City
Or any other city on the planet
We wanted to be writers
It was the lifetime of bright green fingernails

Like Angels from Seoul where we migrated
3rd generation immigrants of being on fire
For doing what we love, and the backlash
Of how translation become a game

And novels became what we ate
At morning, noon, for dinner, midnight snacks.

Note: EJ Koh is featured in:
http://theculturetrip.com/north-america/articles/10-young-american-poets-changing-the-face-of-poetry/

Gamification of a Totem

Gamification of a Totem

Spirits are about obedience
My totem is as Asian woman
Whom I have never met

But tell me, friend
How to obey a poetic movement?
That dominates your life like addiction

Like concentration, in turmoil
Alive with all the grief
Transcendent, agonized, clarifications

All those lyrics of clarity
The necessary permutations
Of ghosts born to die and ancestors reborn

Poets are about themselves
They could be able to talk to each other
But who would read them then?

There is no more powerful revenge
Of words than to love
Loving is primary, primal, predominant

After everything goes red
After everything gets, a little crazy
Narcissism will do, sure, why not!

What does that tattoo on your neck say?
Is it relevant, pertinent, how many have you
Loved like that, spirits are about obedience

My totem is daunting me, from across
The continent, I can hear her laughter
As she grows from girl to woman

From student to guest speaker
From coffee shop drifter to
University professor, what else can she do?

Road to becoming Red

Road to becoming Red

When you say you are succumbed the failure
Of your craft, it hurts me
For how many Red novels are there out there?

The country of yourself still stands
Tall, liberty and justice and poetry
We cannot be faithful to tradition
You know this, hard at it is to accept

Their not literate, your 318.9 million
We’ve lost our inheritance
We’re no longer from India or Korea
Spending a lifetime in a melting pot

Our identity splinters like time-travel
Maybe indebted from previous lives
What does it mean to be a commercial success?
If your name isn’t Rumi, Oliver, Plath, Angelou

Maybe I can imagine you as a cult figure
A Neruda of the post-modern condition
A beat poet of social-media
But I never whole hearted believed

In the art of imitation or the craft of self-presentation
Neither can we pay our ancestors back
For their investment in us, we diverge
I’ve become a writer in my own time

But don’t say you are an orphan misunderstood
Or that you must interview old wounds
Simply to write, your tag cloud isn’t so different
From mine, maybe just more well-rounded
Feminine, appreciate of where you come from.

Postscript:

https://www.facebook.com/thisisEJKoh

I Started a Manuscript as a way of living

I Started a Manuscript as a way of living

It’s arrogant I know, but it’s as if
I wanted language to end with me
I’ve decided to let poetry
Into the center of my life

I’m dating myself as a writer
I turn the craft of the poem
Over on my lips and
The pages don’t cancel each other

I’m not like others, editors, marketers
I’m sick of hearing myself
But no one is as sick of me as me
And that’s okay, I can stand rejection

Joblessness, not like I haven’t done it before
Twenty, thirty, forty years old
Without a bank account, a wife, a hot meal
It’s arrogant I know, but

I always wanted to write in Mandarin
Better than Du Fu, that’s the dream, right
To turn into a Dragon and fly
Through a waterfall, that’s poetry to me

Swimming upwards and reaching for wisdom
That is not intrinsic to my usual self
Going up rivers, coming down as rain
Symbols sleep in me and I carry them

I don’t require national poetry month
To write a poem a day, heck
I’d confess that poetry is like
My breath of exercise, when all other

Systems have shut down, the light
At the effervescent end of the tunnel
I’m dating myself as a writer
And that’s okay, it doesn’t require

The approval of parents
Or the idea that it has to be profitable
Because as an altruist, I’m just a vessel
The Great Love of a Poet

Reincarnates in me, each
And every day, I don’t know the word
Failure, it doesn’t quantify,
That’s the only reason I’m not Asian.

BARREN AUGUST ASSAULT

I

To what purpose, August, do you return?
Beauty is not enough, I’ve noticed
It has died in your heat, I know
The climax of summer is false

II

I prefer in-between seasons,
Spring & Autumn, so much more soul!
Of little leaves, and old blooms
I know what I know, Summer is a vacancy

III

Cactus of the Earth, Eaten mangoes
Buried dreams, empty cups
It’s not enough, that yearly you do this to me
Promise me flowers and leave me with

IV

An empty feeling in my gut
Weedy and insecure Sunsets
Ragged flame of burnt-out hours
Blessed heat, but not bright enough

V

For my blood, liberation in perishing
Every bed so narrow, every friend departed
I have forgotten how the frogs must sound
The summer silence is little solace

For a life caught beneath savage beauty
Timid inequality, squalor, nights without dreams.

Photo Courtesy: http://www.deviantart.com/art/Mysterious-Evening-467231904

字

The power to hurl words is a weapon
Language, invented so long ago
Tortured out of the season to be Silent
We witnessed destruction in this
That the body can speak with a Smile
We knew, how to evolve vocabulary
For the profit of any circumstance

But literature and poetry live on
Like music, affluent to the trends
The word the body couldn’t say
Brought us to a science of uniformity
Laws that all the Species knew
Some kind of order in the mathematics of space

Language evolved in sentient words
Likewise the empathy of our saving lives
Enlightenment, meant to heal with the
Power of words, the music of vibrations
The last energy to wield a shared reality
So next time you speak, think of this:
Everyone is equally innocent and guilty
In the metrics of language, the interview of sound.

Poem on Beauty

My Art is no art
I seek to submit to nature within
That the heart’s streaming tears
Might praise that which is holy
Abiding by a sacred partner

A fullness of life, my companion
The heart of my Art
Has bangles of poetry
Necklaces of pure music
Whose verses & notes are extremely
fond of each other

They love each other deeply
They have no self to interfere
Sleepless and wondrous & pondering
They climb divinity and need
Each other so constantly

As I need to paint, write, rejoice
Even if my technique be wanting
In qualification, education, specification
My Art is no art
Needless to say, my love includes

All manners of healing insignificance:
The moment I stop writing
I face earth’s beauty, and
She tells me to write some more!

Photo Courtesy: http://www.deviantart.com/art/Elation-V-408683972

To All Good Nights

Good night, because we must
Say how to elude strife is to sleep
Father! They won’t tell me
What the light knows

That I shall never know –
Good night, I fumble at my spirit
As players at the chords & keys
Before they drop full of music

Before the end of poetry
Good night, prepare your possessions
You will not need them beyond here
Father! They won’t tell me

Why your breath is so timid today
What the light knows
That we shall never know –
Good night, we are dealing

With Imperial thunderbolts
With a fate that scalps my naked soul
The stars above my head
And my feet pointed to the sea

Good night, because we must
Not know what to do next
Father! In our hour of doom
All evenings steal our purple flight

Reasons profound and Daffodils
Good night – merit and fear qualifies
Humanity, to my beloved need
That never met a more sufficient proof
Than saying good night,
With but itself to rest upon.

Photo Courtesy: http://www.deviantart.com/art/Secluded-404857664

from The Happy Marriage

Days I remember of
Now in my heart
Days in the nude
Of the fondness of new love

Throbbing with the peace
Of ecstasy of windy grass
September days that shook
With the health of

Death that never was
Or Life that can only be
Days I remember of
An Eternity of the heart –

Waiting impatiently for victory
Of a life that stands still
Or moves sure at last of all things
As the things seen by moon or sun.

Photo Courtesy: http://www.deviantart.com/art/Marriage-Wedding-145300777

the Taste of Poverty

A Day! Help and yet another day
Where if prayers were as passer-byes!
They do not greet me, what a world

Such as this, deserves less prayers
More acts of startled selfishness
Might date a victory, in some forgotten

Future, where the past is no longer remembered
These nations and empires and economies
Do not steady my worrisome soul

My psyche was not built for war
Or angel-worn prosperity, I eat
The hopping-sideways for miracles

My life a quiet volunteer work
Of learning empathy in such hurried grounds
My velvet mouth chasing crumbs
With the taste of beauty and divinity

Lingering in my mouth, silver steam
Turmeric and ginger tongue-bells
Garlic butterflies off to the fragrance of noon.

Photo Courtesy: http://www.deviantart.com/art/e-n-d-o-f-t-h-e-d-r-e-a-m-s-403349873