gold

야—옷을 입고 참 이렇게 (예쁜데)
넌—여름날; 난 어떻게

---

yellow like an addict's teeth
yellow like old notebooks' leaves

---

sally: bubble tea
ms. lawrence: red wine
mr. d: fencing sword
ms. leng: poetry

calypso's hold

dear madam,

it would please me to initiate a whirlwind courtship with you this summer.

if you consent, please indicate unambiguously to me that this arrangement is agreeable to you.

your faithful friend and prospective lover,

J

---

it seems impossible to maintain the same level of respect for someone once you become thoroughly acquainted with their personality. cases in which respect increases are rare indeed, and even in these i strongly suspect that it is character, not personality, which has been witnessed instead

---

he doesn't even bother to hide it now. he thinks of her even as we speak, i can tell. how did we get so good at hurting each other? we fight and then go out to dinner. he asks me what i want to order. why does he stay? i do not understand, but i do not complain. steak, i say. i found a smear of red on his shirt the other day. how cliche. when he leaves, i don't go through his stuff. what's the point? when he returns, the wine has come. he looks away and i watch his glass as it grows empty and miserable. i look at him; i do the same

the witch and the wardrobe

I love you. I love you,
but I'm turning to my verses
and my heart is closing
like a fist

---

you used to be an ugly girl;
lips too large and splotchy skin
and all the boys avoided you so
you stayed up late and vowed
revenge by drinking in beautiful
things to charm and arm yourself
against them. you used their verses
to ease the ache, the balm of beauty
to self medicate. but by some twisted
trick of fate or nature - before your
heart had time to heal, spring had come
and it was time to bloom. pushed out
of the bud severely naked and unsure
how to act - so you studied the art of
enchanting, first yourself then those
around you. you crafted a character
for your new form and embraced her
a little too tightly the first time you
had a boy under your spell. you trained
your tongue into silver and practiced
fiction with such fierce devotion as if
you could trick your dreams into
coming true. I came across you again
after all these years and wasn't quite sure
if I was meeting the same girl
but the more you talked the less
it mattered, as I became increasingly
convinced with each word that you
were once a her or that she
became a you. the first time
you broke a boy's heart, you told me,
you felt like a monster, and secretly loved it.
smoke billowed from your perfect lips,
seductive, heart-shaped, dripping
scarlet the shade of poisoned promises.
they no longer had names but epithets
'the one after k' or 'the one that liked to
dance' and when you met a new one you
had already begun chiselling in the epitaph
of your relationship and taking notes
for its post-mortem/obituary: "beloved
no. 22: Halloween party 2012 - ???? "
you are not so much a poet but a mortician,
a cosmetician obsessed with your clients
yet morbidly detached, you pretty them up
before displaying them like mannequins,
only its their sighs that you paint, because
you decided that everything must be poignant
or else pinned down and revised or
remade - you perform these surgeries
at your workshop - that magical place
that elaborate room - the loom
that affords the ability to transform
yarn and thread into counterfeit change.
you used to be an ugly girl;
you still are, in many ways

the golden mean of self loathing

I don't think anybody loves being alone as much as I do. I just enjoy solitude, don't need company, it's nice i mean but I think it's wrong to depend on others for happiness. All praise does is taint the soul. This one girl who follows me around, all she does is repeat what I say. When we're out together they ask if we're siblings. All she does is give a goofy grin and turn to me and say 'I don't know, are we siblings?' It's infuriating sometimes, to be the only one with an opinion.

---

sometimes i leave a story alone for so long that i forget what it was originally meant to be. someone, please finish this one for me

call your girlfriend

                                                                                                                                                                         legato, amabile
"say, do you remember when our anniversary was"
"mm, can't really say. did we even have one, i wonder. it was such a disorganised affair"
"true. full of full stops and half starts. all i can recall are a series of graduations and little deaths"
"tch. you're gonna write that down later huh"
"already have"
"i remember the party though. the night you asked me out"
"i remember it too. you always remember your first time i guess"
                                                                                                                                                                         repente, giocoso ma non troppo
"hey"
"hm?"
"do you ever write about me?"
"mm.. every now and again.   you don't mind, do you?"
"nah. it's kind of flattering in a way"
               
                                                                                                                                                                          larghetto, gentile con lontano
"i guess you can't spend that amount of time with someone without having them affect you somehow"
"how do you mean"
"mm... like superficial things perhaps. musical tastes, fashion -- or fundamental things. life choices. standards.  that sort of thing. we'd probably be leading pretty different lives right now if we never got together, don't you think"
"mm i guess so.   we probably wouldn't be sitting here together like this"
"probably not"
                                                                                                                                                                          meno mosso
"say, can i ask you a personal question"
"bit late to be asking permission now"
"what i mean is, it's kind of a touchy subject"
"shoot"
"does your wife mind? us meeting up like this"
"not really. i tell her i'm meeting an old friend"
"ぅっ~ん.. sneaky"
"if she asked for the specifics i'd tell her we used to date but she never asks"
"ぅっ~ん.....      you should probably tell her though, instead of having her find out"
"you're probably right. i'll tell her next time"
"you think she'd be cool with it?"
"probably. she's a cool person"
"why didn't you tell her the first time though"
"i didn't think i had to. it's not like i'm doing anything wrong"
"well no, but imagine if she finds out. it's like, it doesn't matter what you were doing. you should have told her"
"  i didn't think it was relevant"
"well, it's kind of relevant"
"i'm not seeing you because we used to date. i'm seeing you because we're old friends"
"i know that. but your wife doesn't"
                                                                                                                                                                        sospirando
"so you're saying i should explain myself to her each time i step out of the house"
"yeah"
"that's ridiculous"
"that's marriage. did you not read the fine print"
"i must've missed it"
                                                                                                                                                                         attacca, poco sospirando
"that's always been the problem with you, you know. you never want to explain yourself to anyone - you're only ever accountable to yourself"
"no, that's - this is different. this is because we trust each other, which means we don't have to justify every little thing we do or say"
"okay but sneaking out of the house to meet an ex-girlfriend, isn't that betraying her trust?"
"i'm not    sneaking... i'm just  being... "
"insensitive? selfish? conceited? all of the above?"
                                                                                                                                                                           rit. morendo
"... okay, fine. i get it. i'm a terrible human being.  can we please just drop it and move on"
                                                                                                                                                                        pausa sostenuto, a bene placito
        "no,  you don't get it
 but okay.

                                                   let's move on"
                                                                                                                                  lasciare suonare, a niente        

the art of dying

rationalizing grief is speculating the source of a shadow

---

scientists keep death in a cage - an endless supply
to dissect into tangible / manageable constituents
-- electricity and chemicals and such they keep
it neutered muzzled detained deprived of its
due dignity constrained denied its lethal
domain attempts to diminish its deadly
integrity through a microscope lens
to frame and tame it through a
windowpane - nothing short
of blasphemy consumed
by the urge to create
and control but
sooner or lat-
er the cage
breaks a-
nd they
tend t-
o de-
com-
po-
se

ice

"what's wrong?"
"nothing." [everything]

---

"doesn't it suck that we have to be social animals" 
she stopped swaying. abruptly, she angled her head away and stared at him with a deep scrutiny. 
"stop." she demanded."what are you doing?" 
"what?" 
"this. this whole thing. being charming. being candid and honest. what are you trying to pull?"
blankly, he blinked away the accusation. "i'm not trying to pull anything. I'm just, talking. dancing."
"well stop," she said, wrenching herself away from him. "it's weird and i don't like it and i'd like you to stop it."

---

"are you familiar with the term slow food?"
"you mean like escargot?"

---

"do you know what the worst feeling in the world is?" heartbreak crept into her voice. "it's wanting to eat right after a meal. it's wanting to run with nowhere to go. it's searching for something without knowing what. it's wanting to cry and having no tears."

---

"i love you"
"that's inappropriate"

---

"what's it about?"
nervous laughter. "what do you mean?"
"your poem. what's it about?"
"'what's it about'? I don't know. I mean -- it's hard to explain."
"What's so hard to explain? You wrote it right, doesn't it have a meaning?"
"Yeah, it does.    It definitely has a meaning. I'm just, not too sure how to phrase it properly."
"how hard can it be? i mean, if you know what it means --"
"i do. but it's like, different. i know what it's about the same way i know what a piece of music or a feeling is about. vaguely. and in glimpses. it's hard to put into words."
"okay, well, if you don't wanna recite it to me, why don't you try describing it."
"describing it?"
"yeah, just go through each line and paraphrase what it says."
"   it's gonna sound really dumb."
"that's okay. i don't mind."
"i just don't see the point."
"please. humour me."

 "it's  about this girl -- and she lives in the woods. but it's not like, a nice, friendly kind of place -- it's a really, harsh, unaccommodating place but she's lived there all her life, on her own, and she's really delicate and gentle, like a flower, but because she lives in such a terrible place, you know, she has to bear all these burdens and become tough and, grow up -- and so, this lovely girl just becomes, hard and exhausted and just -- tired of living, but she keeps on going. she just keeps on living, and getting more and more worn out -- and the worst part is that she doesn't know how much better it could be or that she doesn't have to live there, because for as long as she can remember, she's been living in the wild, on her own. and that's all she knows. and that's all she'll ever know."

 "sounds like a great poem."