To take us lands away

(Prayers of Jivatma)

The sky is the content
The trees are the content
The people, they’re just visitors

Who will go extinct like any species
Who may attempt to fly from
Star to planet to planet-star

As a dragonfly might fly from one
End of the summer backyard to the other
There is no special season

To be whisked away, no passage
Like a book, no counselor like a page
From the frugal reality we live

To the grand impression of the human soul
Encapsulated in a few novels
That transformed the way we perceive

Events and our cognition of how
The world works, and what is possible
That’s philosophy of memes

That we project what we invest in
A chariot at play forever learning
With a mind that can barley keep up

To the new speed of information
The stars are the content
The birds are the believers
We are just authors of a human story.

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/

Like the Writing on your Hand

Like the Writing on your Hand

Do you think it’s plausible
Just wait a second, for a moment
That we take pieces of each other

Forever influenced, eternally merged?
If I swallow your poetry
Does it thirst and settle
And make rapture

In my voice, as if forever?
Do I carry a part of you
Your narrative, meme, genes?

I think my inner Korean voice
Can attest to it, scandalously odd?
While no one is watching
There’s no one to hear

The echo of me dying
To the new one I am now
After knowing of your existence

That thingess of absence
It goes and sucks like space
But space-time is permeable
To gorgeous quotations

And that is why
I have reincarnated a piece of you
With me forever

Do you think it’s plausible?
Take a guess, run away, write
It on your hand.

The Last Sunset

After I have reached The West for clothes of new colors I will perhaps know the rows Of ancient trees, like my ancestors I will know the two worlds That separated past and future Sunken to Ocean, lifted to skies …

In the regime of hunger

No more of this poetry.
Bring on the hard, harsh real life instead;
Let the jingle of verse disappear
Bury the lyrics of my youth

Like precious Ivory of another time
When the creatures of the Earth were free
No more of this poetry.
No more need for the serenity of a poem

For the empty invisible sense of victory
Poetry, I give you a break today
In the regime of hunger, the Earth
Found more useful things, like family;

The full moon burns like a loaf of
Bread in my mouth, my wife
Waiting for me to overcome idleness.

Photo Courtesy: http://www.deviantart.com/art/Sophia-and-the-Pilgrim-406349902