▲ Drawings, 2018~2019
I live with numerous species, most notably isopods and a lizard. The lizard has been with me since December 24, 2018, and continues to be a part of my life to this day. To live in harmony with it, I have adapted my life to follow the cycles of the sun. It rescued me from the unbalanced and fragmented life in Seoul, Korea.
▲ Drawings for poem from 2018
▲ Photos from my military service period. 2017
These poems are part of the 50 poems I wrote while serving as a soldier and instructor at a recruit training battalion in the front-line area of Korea from 2016 to 2018.
The Death of a Beetle
A bee’s corpse tumbles in the wind.
The beetle, its feet once again touching the earth,
stirs parts of its crippled body in vain.
How futile these movements, this surplus of pain.
Ants, versed in the art of feasting, merely hide within the dying embrace, waiting,
while the voiceless insect’s vigor hardly wanes,
click-click—Is this truly a formidable will to live,
or just the mechanical movement of ligaments,
spun in response to jaws clamped tight
within the embrace?
Cheering for death is a cheer for the will,
for the twitch, or perhaps for the astonishingly precise
grip of an ant’s mandibles.
What meaning did the beetle find
in the effort of moving its body a mere millimeter,
followed by the sound of rustling, like dry leaves,
as it rolled 30cm away in the wind?
Soon, the funeral procession began,
and they carried away the twitching to somewhere afar.
The Disappearance of the Mountain Range
A massive mist obscured the mountain range.
As if it never existed, it vanished entirely.
Our adventurer, who had only gazed at the horizon, exclaimed,
“Now is the time. The mountains have gone on a journey, and only clusters of clouds remain.”
And then, he too disappeared into the mist suddenly.
When the colossal clouds cleared and the transparent air opened its gates,
the mountain had returned from its voyage, yet no one has seen him since.
Wandering paths where it’s unclear if they rise or not, I walked on.
Behind and before me, a world of white fog – I swam through it alone.
No time to relish in prideful sights, nor to compare the next peak, engulfed in thick fog.
When a mountain breeze came from somewhere, dramatically clearing the cool yet suffocating fog,
he saw it, the world thousands of meters below. The unknown zenith and the vast beauty of the land.
Now, there are no mountains there.
Only the joy of swimming up and down in clouds, not knowing what lies a step ahead, remains.
The Nature of Life
All night, adjusting the radio antenna, squeezed by books,
Wedged in the window crack, struggling, I remember.
Lying in bed, letting thoughts flow, experiencing the life of cells,
I recall discovering unavoidable pale particles, no matter where I looked.
Then, closing my eyes, I was amidst a dim fireworks display in the dark,
In a room painted with flashing wallpaper, as if splattered with paint.
The principle of a defibrillator lies in removing the irregular electrical impulses causing cardiac arrest, Those irregularities, I was told, are akin to the noisy, fierce sound of blood rushing through vessels, Heard by a fetus.
It’s that very static one hears when covering ears with both palms.
Buried underground, our grandmother now
Is enveloped in a world of flashing, noisy, inescapable noise.
Is that becoming noise itself?
Melting into the soil, blossoming into the wind, caught by an antenna, swirling in the cochlea, Traveling through veins, a faint presence flickering in our sight?
Born from noise, returning to noise, living a life
Seems akin to the struggle of catching voices on the radio.
Holding tightly to an antenna, not knowing how it works –
Gazing into the void with contrived belief and instinctive inference, Numerous earnest attempts.
I still don’t know how to make the radio work well. Unsure of the relation,
It simply comes and goes.
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