2nd Excerpt from Seoul Sonnets

It’s too late, it seems
to chase you down now;
they had you on the wheel
long before we met, –
but too early for this:
슬퍼하다 – too early
to feel grief so deep,
so literary – but I was
taught that time—time avails
not, so here is the senseless
lament of stinging behind the
eye, and explosion of colour
when the flash of light
smashes against the retina.

Do I forgive you? I do –
I did before we began, knew
there was nothing else
to do – knew it was
the errand wholly of
a fool, though sometimes
in fairytales, the fool
breaks through, so when
you ask for forgiveness,
I smile so deeply as to feel
pain, and say “yes! yes!
I do!” How could I
grudge, embittered
against one as pure as you?

Why do we chase foolish
challenges, and roam
through vampire streets
for belt notches? Why
do we stray off the path
into the bracken?
Service wrote a poem
about us and I won’t quote
but you know
which one – I beg
the question: can you
find your way by only
staying on the road, or
are we forced by spirits

To wander off from the
easy path? The gift is love,
at least, that is what I
have read in between the
lines of discarded fliers and
subway ads bearing images
of surgical beauty that
whisper “누가 당신
사랑?” Why
do they laugh? Why do
I think of the jeering faces
of the girls in 2nd grade,
and why would I think
anything has changed?

The gift is love, but the giver
is going broke slowly, calling
up on the mainline for more,
for truckloads – because
by Sunday we all feel unloved
and lost in a spacy
exhaustion loop and
we can’t shop our way out
and prayer seems hollow, but
still worth a try – worth
the sweat of turning the
page in search of
a line to change your life by –
a lie to forget by.