Calling 1



I love. I love wild honey and locusts at my waist, flesh prepared for lust. Searing the back of my hand with a cigarette, growing fuller each time I sin, like bamboo, plunging my face into the pale green flame, weeping, I love. I love, like a little bird dead in a back alley, like a heaven-cursed ox wagging its last tail, in a world spun through eons, throwing a stone, stepping from stone to stone, from star to star, from moon to moon, barefoot, like a cart in the winter fields, circling your house once, circling your garden once, circling your eyes and circling your blood all night, flesh ready to be cursed. Called by god, getting lighter as my fingernails and toenails turn brown, becoming a downy rabbit, I love. I love, for a thousand years and ten thousand years, in a damned, damned wedding gown, blowing a horn, yes, bring greater pain. The more precarious I am, the happier I get, the more I writhe, the more beautiful I become, so free, the root of shame, I, with a whip and a pair of leather shoes at my waist, still driving the carriage of mad horses through the jungle, still,



Yes, bring greater pain. My love














Calling 2



When you hold out your hand, even to the mudflat a flock of doves

comes, coo coo coo

When you sweep the hem of your robe, storm clouds

roll ecstatic down my crooked spine


When you call, I become all the blades of grass in the fields

food for insects

my eyeballs a meal for hungry crows

my death known to no one

I become the gatekeeper at a temple of bones

and go among the droplets beaded everywhere on spiderwebs

Did you see me turn silver lantern gold lantern flower lantern

with a little pack donkey jingle jingle jingle

I pass through the city gate to the people


Everyone, receive blessings. Blessings

What frozen breath calls me

Everyone, receive fortune. Fortune

What desperate voice welcomes me


Though you are near, I have nothing more to give

I can't even be the broken ice, where do I

go, even my soul becomes a rag and

sings and echoes ridge over ridge to the far hills

oak trees dogwoods convulse aahhhh

aahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh the hidden

silk thread unravels, spinning wheels whirr in every village

wives hum along

drunk children beat the drums

the church tower, silver bell gold bell flower bell peal all night

the old stable, jack donkeys bear young

soldiers return from the battlefield

Everyone, dance the dance of blessing. Dance of blessing

What bone-aching soul calls me again

Everyone, dance the dance of eternity. Dance of eternity

What forsaken soul loves me again


When you blink once by my side,














Mom, I Want to Bear a Fatherless Child



Mom, I want to bear a fatherless child

under the streetlight passes a woman with thick hair

on the road where a white car is parked,

Mom, I want to bear a fatherless child

how shameful it would be if everything were only true

how unhappy we would be on a one-way street with nothing to fight, sometimes we need pretense

Mom, it is early dawn and drizzling

Grinding my teeth as I burn seditious books, I will plant a world in the very flesh that once was you, I will bear a child, with a mind that grows sharper when I drink, at the sea of fire where explosions and my share of sin grow fatter, eyes wide, I will bear a fatherless child


silver beads gold beads white peonies blooming with the flowers with the seasons thorn fields blooming every night every dream

running through winter's cold air, excited

I will nurture the hump on my back

in a black raincoat, raising goosebumps

in a world that tries so hard to be faithful by denying everything, the devil’s gasoline, oh, murdering

I will bear a fatherless child,

bind a thousand paths into one

a child made calmer by misery


Mom, in the staggering hills and rivers, in my staggering country, in every corner, thin-limbed people

a bolt from the blue under palms and oaks

Mom, I want to bear a fatherless child, I want to be humiliated, how dull our days would be without humiliation, sometimes we must go looking for the lost pain

Mom, winter is still deep, snow falls 

Crushing my face against the wall, gaunt for a season

I will plant contempt in the very world that once was you, I will bear a child Mom, silver bells gold bells, a chime still chaste, mending broken dolls under a sky sucked dry by courage and passion

when it’s dark I will boil water in an aluminum kettle on a blazing furnace spreading my legs more dazzlingly than any drug, screaming, I will bear a fatherless child, you’ll see

At the evening station my dear brother crouched, chewing gum without end, his skin rough, people leaving with loads on their backs, on and on

peeling skin gnawing bone

plowing the sick field

born huge, huge, the red-tongued child














Irregular Periods



I count the days on the calendar

You can’t get pregnant

Maybe so. I am frail,

have been on medication for so long,

I must be barren ground. But

I want a child, I want to be a woman.

Like a life gone awry somewhere along the way

my bleeding clotted.

Yes, I admit it. But people do renew

themselves and I am a horse resting

briefly for a new flight, call it

a state of chaos before the earth was born

Yes, my womb is a gutter waiting for rain,

Tomorrow’s agave, dormant. A mast driven out,

driven in, driven in again. An icicle that freezes, then melts.

A stalactite that turns into ice cream. A gentle breeze

wetting the blades of grass after a dry breath. A burning hill,

a clean station at the apex, ready to relight

the lamps…


Someone whispers to me again. You can’t

get pregnant.

Nonsense!

I whisper deeper into my womb. Nonsense!



So now I look down

at the amniotic fluid surging like a torrent inside me.

Children thrive as they cut through the current

Yes, I was a perfect woman all along.














Road of Fog



When the fog rolls in, every road leads to the sky

Like the glass necklace I wore with curiosity in childhood, the fog

its hard shell and gentle flesh, makes tigers and foxes in the far-off jungle

gentle and neat

I tighten the collar of my trench coat and search for what I must do

What will it be?

Will the haze of fog-laden leaves

linger after the fog clears, my mother exhausted from praying for me

rolls onto her back, the fog makes a frenzy flare that would lay me flat

The fog makes me quiet it

Things breed little by little in the moments unseen

What cannot breed even a little is love in the fog

What shall I do. Is it my cold-blooded way of loving that

makes me smoke alone in the fog until I nearly faint? Cold-blooded way of loving…

Not a chance. The space of the fog must be filling my chest with a cold

foreign temper, waiting until I am no longer myself

I am inside the secret

of not weeping, as I slowly shed metallic tears of empty space

Where should I go

As the fog thickens, the path widens, the sky unfolds,

I cannot breathe, I must choose a way. But where?

With its deep roots, the fog drives even the sleepy tree roots

to shoot toward the sky. I see nothing

When this fog vanishes, will the droplets gather and the world grow bright?

But I do not know if that is truly what I wish for














Platanus



It wasn’t easy to make leaves


day and night

pumping

hanging countless green fish

making them writhe

I know

I know. It all, eyes flashing

it was once water, once ground for houses

sometimes a cart was left teetering

foul manure piled up


You, ever-new lover,


day and night

holding onto water and wind

your gift is to

caress the lonely sobbing wind and water


Tomorrow an orange tree

in summer you winked with shade

but come autumn you will beckon

with breasts of oranges


Green leaves, silver paper fish, and oranges

whoever loves you

strokes your depths in secret


even in drought,

to see you ever fresh

is hard

to stand by your side

is harder


Yet, you are always alone, moon-rising, a new lover

a widower fox will do

a wolf under the full moon will do

even a bone beetle from the graveyard


day and night

the innocence

of your roots crawls along the ground


Everything in this world that moves and has form

so long as it breathes

is a musician to your womb















Rapture 4



Can I not ride an elevator to the end of the sky

hurling down watermelon heads and licking

their burst guts

riding an elevator and licking star candy

can I not reach the fire pit of the sky


Cradling the sin sharpened by confession

death is a passion, pouring out bright green fruit like a dancer

lies, lies.

Jumping with feet crushed by the fruit and festering,

can I not spit at almighty god


With lead weights tied on like balloons, falling,

I am a slab of meat hanging at a butcher’s shop,

can I not be more vulgar like that

Before night falls, can I not become

a more tedious self


Dribbling piss, a time of wandering bedews new shoots

What withers was beautiful; it must wither more

Limping and limping, can I not become a rainbow

Feeding logs to the hearth, can I not blaze up too

and become Joan of Arc of Orléans

a little more


Can I not become terribly brilliant

If the darkness soon to fall becomes a saxophone that strikes the heart,

my hair will give me away. Can I not

be a hummingbird that hides behind a leaf,

a beetle set afloat in a bottle of water

The frozen earth must thaw, and if I want to scream, I must scream, but I—

bewitched by yellow dust not knowing where I go, even if my scabby, bloody face turns into a flower when I look back and the lump of pus turns into milk and honey, yet I must be content with a life on a single dry piece of bread. Can I not be satisfied this way? Can I not live without love? Can I not substitute thirst for happiness? Can I not overcome darkness with deeper misfortune? Even when stone bridges collapse, those with stone bridge mouths simply shoot arrows of words into the air – stones harden each time the cough dies down.


Oh,


if loving pain is pain

if loving despair is despair…




This night, this night like linen

A tough rope binds my eyes tight

The small petty things will shatter into smaller pieces

What flows will flow, what stops will stop

When heavy shoes pinch my toes, a star falls from a star,

There were never any memories to begin with, a mutter from somewhere

Is it a hallucination, or the sound of late autumn leaves breathing winter air

perhaps, where did it come from, this rain that soaks my trouser cuffs


this winter rain













Roar



Let’s go to the sea. I should go to the sea

and tell of the clock I dropped into boiling water,

thinking it was an egg.

And tell that my purity – though I do not know what purity is, whether lily

or golden lead, anyway my purity – was, in the way I most wanted,

given to a man like Genghis Khan.

How sublime a twisted life is, like an adolescent wanderer.

What we see drunk is only palm reading under a magnifying glass,

isn’t it?

I should go to the sea, go to the sea,

and speak of mopping floors in childhood, of Abraham’s lamb,

of my groom who turned into Jacob.

Endless sea. So a sea where nothing can be promised.

I will go to that sea, hear its sound,

take in the warm breath of fish that lives in the deepest darkness,

and condemn the roar of the sea, pushed around by others, by gales.

Yet I will go and preach that the gale is true, like a madman’s shout

I should tell of the free-drifting seaweed, the kelp, their nourishment.

I should ask that a floating ownerless raft be given a keeper

that I never again board the boats of samsara, the wrecked boats of samsara

then,

then,

Perhaps the earth’s slight tilt will set itself right…













My Snug Little Room



my snug little room


the table is always there

the long sofa

pencil case

typewriter

books and books


but no cat no snail no rose

exist

no clouds no thorns of clouds

no lightning clashing lightning

none of that lives here


things that come and go

without end

such things such things

do not live here


because my snug little room

is all of my freedom


with what breathlessness

quietly quietly

I draw in the things

outside the window


cutting away

the thorns of my monologue

that keeps digging deeper and deeper


embracing the things

that come and go

without end

I live on

in my snug little room














Fasting Prayer



1


That summer was pale

On the street full of branches laden with bent leaves

children swarmed, though born, they did not grow

Though I flogged myself many times to start something new, the day’s color vanishes as noon deepens, what bone aching scent blows in from somewhere, I could not shed a single drop of blood



2


That summer even the monsoon passed me by

under the firmness of the sun floating like a white saucer

Unable to eat or excrete, in a small room smelling of mothballs, only the loathsome hymn roused me, growling at me to live and live

Meanwhile, the devil that had been building its nest inside me kept fainting at the hymn's keen sting

Mother, mother, I think my skin is peeling

That summer Mother didn’t cry, Mother, this is a gamble, I have to plant trees every day, I have to study, my child, do such things later, right now you must drive out the evil spirits

That summer, my whole body twisted into a flower-purple pretzel, Punishment O punishment, I asked again and again

Lord, who is everywhere and nowhere








Pak Seowon