홍대

Vintage clothes and tar spiraled smokes

fist fights with drunken model dames,

gents swaggering inn k p o p fashion.

Pubs booming with flesh-tearing bass

early 2000s hits send kids to rage;

tequila shots and capsuled white death.

Kisses ripe strawberry blush

baroque college girls buzzin’ under green and yellow

7/11 midnight neon hush.

Around devil’s den she scurries.

bar hopping dark-curled angel veiled with

razor tongue quick to butcher my ill-heart inflections.

I swim through Seoul afraid.

winter breeze fades my bare skull;

walking miles, passing thousands.

Streets narrow, shops call in neon buzz

skyscrapers fierce, unphased by glacial breath.

Sudden winds upend my nervous den,

flaky mind dropping anxious crumbs,

break bread with yourself;

Enemies come and go,

little by little you forget yourself and

meet up in a gleaming city all unknown…