SEEING INTO SEOUL

His screams ricochet off the hard

helmet of South Korea,

slice through Jung Ju’s chin strap,

explode recognition in my ear.

My hearing strains to grasp

a single one of his words

which hang for dear life

from my 13^th story motel balcony.

Bricks of a boy’s tears

smash the neighborhood,

crack silent shrill instructions

of a shopkeeper to his mutt,

halting marbles where they cascade,

even children

with mud in their eyes

stop slinging looks and listen.

He screams the anthem of a nation

bent over its government’s knee,

sold out of a briefcase in the Dai-Moon Ku tunnel,

traded by its mother to a black market,

restless under the bad belly

of its obese Northern brother.

Korea, the mad. An aphid in a cemetery.

A sliver buried in a temple’s chest.

His screams turn song,

burning throat’s ceiling,

rattling skin and nerves,

flies huddle on my window screen

as it whaps against night’s heat.

Mama-sans on the ground below look up,

others just casually walk by.

He is singing the sanity out.

I lunge for the balcony door

tear the fear from his echo’s cage

and scream back into pulsating florescent black:

“I HEAR YOU!”

Seemingly, silence. The city

gone to rest after a night of vomit.

Another child caws back, giggling,

runs into a McDonald’s.

All that’s heard are distant cars

and Big Blue in the sky

leaning over the Namsan mountains,

whispering into depression’s ear,

“Congratulations, it’s a boy.”