November 13-19, 2017: Poetry from David Flynn and Seth Howard

The Woman I Love

The woman I will marry is boring.  
She sits in her chair, and I sit,
on the far side of the room,
in mine.
She makes me a salad
instead of the barbecue I crave.
We talk about
her job.

The woman I will marry is aging.
Once with long red hair
flowing from a red Corvette,
she lets her mother do her perm.
Below her eyes,
blue becoming white,
droop semi-circles of skin.
She wants no sun.

Together we are two people on the edge of great age,
yet when she runs away from me,
as she does twice a year,
I go insane.

This is a good end.
After death we will live in two coffins,
separated by a wall of dirt.
Why not start now?

Memories of a Gangnam Café

Here in the afternoon fringed with lilac, we wait
amongst ourselves, the sweetness of peach
Soju, & subtle-flashbacks of a Bibimbop you had in that  
Korean restaurant, transported into the
intimacy of Seoul.  The bathroom stalls dip
down all the way
to the floor.  Yet no ice, (the way it was at that
Tom & Tom’s in Gangnam).  Nights staying
up late, the healthy-buzz of the city, & to glance
up from your book at times, a wish to be
a part of it all.  Gorgeous girls come, & go
in the evening, somewhere in late October, or perhaps
November.  Fragments of the Hangul language
you hear as something
else. 
The Schizophrenic husk that lies fallen
on the floor, & amidst all this a breath
you take, remembering a friend, or a mentor.
The night full of so much possibility, &
the light in her eye as she glanced at
you from across the room.  Luminous-insect that hatches
in the moonlight, lunar moth that drifts
on the fringe of cognizance. 
& so, you are tortured by your own
mind.  The double-speak of sounds,
when one blends into another, the echo
of her lovely eyes, as the image trails
somewhere behind.  You begin with
this metallic-object in your hand, & sip
your coffee as if everything was fine.
(The bitter aftertaste, & the intimation of some
faint music, in the background, in
a language of sounds, which  
somewhat resembles Japanese.)  &
yet you taste
the
primordial in-between, as words
race on the page, insects.
& a dream you see returns,
a slow acceptance
of what your world had offered,
in the evening, when those dark-featured
nymphs entered in an arc 
of motion, & you embark on
this late journey, in which
you are born into another realm.