At the first sunrise,

a consciousness goes ablaze

when light fills the dark.

The world. A playground.

Curious cub running, climbing,

often stumbling.

With head in the clouds,

fighting against the current

to discover self.

In the prime of life

learning to swim the current

to keep self afloat.

At the last sunset,

only the memories stay

when dark fills the light.

Even when my body was trembling

Even when my legs started to shake

Even when I dreaded seeing people today

Even when I no longer existed in their world

Even when I detached myself from everyone

Even when I carried my own burden on my shoulder

Even when I constantly felt misunderstood

Even when bad days were starting to crash down on me

Even when there were tears underneath my eyes

I mustered up a smile

and whispered to myself,

"It's going to be okay,"

despite the tears rolling down my cheeks

and my face trying to fight back its hiccups

Because at the end of the day,

I survived the days I thought I wouldn't wake up in.

I did it before. I could do it again.

I grasped onto my own palms, convincing myself that it was someone else's.

It's going to be okay.

Korean: 우리는 그 날 복숭아 빛 하늘을 걸었다.

English: We walked through a peach-colored sky that day.

We walked through a peach-colored sky that day.

I remember us walking through a peach-colored sky that day,

Behind the beautiful sunset and the clouds that lay.

A glorious painting by God set on high,

A work of art and a gift to the human eye.

I remember us walking through a peach-colored sky that day,

My arm around your shoulder so that we could watch and stay.

The best part is walking through the beauty with you,

Even something like a colorful sky becomes something new.

I remember us walking through a peach-colored sky that day,

Laughing at our jokes and having a lot to say.

The glowing sky brings radiance to our love,

As we look together at the brightness above.

I remember us walking through a peach-colored sky that day,

Holding hands and thinking about our future in our minds to pray.

I don't know where we will be throughout the next few years,

But I hope we are together, through the joy and the tears.

Let's walk through a peach-colored sky again one day.

I miss curiosity. I miss the days when I could stare at the sun for hours (despite clear warnings not to) and ponder what made it burn so bright. Bright and painful, burning my corneas while the other kids' screams of joy faded in the background. I miss being able to bury my head in the sand and find my own world. I miss the buzzes of creation flashing like lightning bugs around my head after I saw a new thing. I miss a time when the highway of ideas ran nonstop instead of only thinking of bills and money and how I can climb the slippery walls of the maze I'm trapped in and escape the rat race. I miss the days of having nothing to worry about except whether or not it would rain and if your friend would be there the next day.

There is no joy in my mind anymore. there are the faux words, strung to sound like myself though I feel like the bread left over after a toddler has surgically removed the cheese, lettuce, tomato, and ham one by one, sucking the flavor of them all and tosing them aside. Perhaps its the medicine to steady the moods that used to sway like a ship or maybe it's that I feel like the other disciples too afraid of the sea threatening to Titanic their biblical ship to notice that Jesus is standing on fucking water. Maybe I'm just doomed to continually drown until I make like all the authors in those books I look at all around my room and just fade to obscurity and die penniless on the street. This is truly morose, but what's to be expected when one loses their job and is faced with a mountain of bills and debt collectors and loan sharks smacking metaphorical bats in gruff hands. They have lawyers for that now.

What if i were to just disappear and end up walking down a street in Amsterdam with my dreadlocks discreetly tucked into a scarf and holding a Michael Kors bag with a hamster's chubby face hanging out? No one ever expects a hamster. It feels like it's been years since I've been able to write a scenario of any sorts. I think I know how a thirty-eight year old football player feels in third quarter after they just came back from a hamstring injury. I've missed words but God is it hard to keep going. That's how I feel nowadays. It's hard to keep going. I fill my day with arbitrary tasks because taking naps just isn't fun anymore. Taking a nap on a lazy day used to feel nice and now it just makes me feel like a waste of time and space.

There used to be a time when being alive didn't feel so daunting. I wish I could go back and find the exact second when I started to feel like Atlas, being crushed under the weight of the real world and unable to escape. There feels like no out, and any out I can foresee will take years to enact because it's never just me. That's how they get you. Ensnare others who will keep you accountable so you'll never leave, never be able to fully get away. How do people survive this tribulous span of adulthood before they get the relief of becoming an elder? When will this journey become enjoyable instead of a constant, careful labryrinth of choices that will blindside you twenty-three steps down the road?

Well, if there's a stain on our clothes, that we fought tooth and nail to keep clean. Would wiping it out mean the stain's death ?

I personally feel the system of justice is like a washing machine, cleaning the dirty laundry of an unjust society.

With revenge being one of it's many cleansing cycles.

I am

the consequences—

the collection

of rotting fleshes

laying mangled

and neglected

by the wayside,

desecrated

withered

and aged

from your hate,

then needle-poked

and sewn

by your string of insults

laced with prejudice.

Born

from your selfish labours,

and malevolence,

I am

the leftovers,

the discarded scraps,

scar tissue,

stapled, bolted,

and hacked

hardly held together enough

to contain

an ordinary man

much less

an eight-foot-monstrosity—

You sought perfection

based on nothing

but insecurities

driving yourself mad enough

to inject the blood

of a thousand toxic souls

into a single empty cavity—

An unhinged obsession

ending in bioelectric rage

creating a paraspinal pulse

and legitimizing

an impossible science.

A necromancy

disproving everyone

including yourself

because

the moment you exclaimed

that I was in fact “alive”

beneath that melancholy sky

you were convinced

I was neither dead

or alive,

or worthy of either

so, you rejected me,

left me alone

and confused

on that frigid trestle bed

without a name

my heart palpitating

and eyes filled

with the fresh glaze

of newborn sweat.

Congratulations

Mrs. Societal Shelly,

You

created life from death

only to kill it again

with abandonment

then buried it

under a pile

of despair

that is my body

and sealed it

within my hollowed core

just before

tossing me into a heartless world

to fend off mankind

alone.

I rose

unbeknown to my fate

eager to find love

while wearing ignorance as a smile

and holding hope in an open palm

wishing it to be filled by another.

But an adolescent mind,

only needs the clock hands

to revolve the sun

a few times

to grasp how cruel,

“Out there” will treat you.

I’ve been spit on

shot at

and chewed out,

then chased off,

beat up,

and knocked down

too many times to count.

I’ve been ripped at the seams,

bruised beyond repair,

and my patience is stretched

as thin as my skin,

and I blame you

for making me see the world

for what it is,

and never being there to warn me how ugly

they thought I’d be.

Never once,

had I considered beauty

an attribute to measure character

nor had I stood by a mirror

weeping relentlessly,

but here I stand.

After constant beratement

and never meeting

a single soul with good intentions,

I’ve started to believe.

For the first time

in the mirror

I see what they’re afraid of.

I’m a walking graveyard

contorted by cruelty and pain

suffering from

social arthritis

deforming my limbs

and swelling my joints into mountains.

I’m a hideous mistake,

a horrible life

of your creation

worthy

to the flames of condemnation

but only after

your misery is complete.

Ashamed of who I am

I turn out the lights

I dry my sunken eyes

until I realize

I’ve acquired night vision.

I must have adapted to the dark

After all these years

becoming accustomed to

the absence of light

thanks to the ones

with pitchforks and spears,

the ones with guns

and knives,

and the ones holding fire

with hateful tongues,

but mostly

thanks to you,

Mrs. Shelly,

Thanks to you,

I see clearly in the dark.

I see what I am now.

and I see what I must do!

My eyes sink deeper,

and grimmer

becoming soulless ebony circles

fully dilated

with one clear purpose.

“I was benevolent and good;

misery made me a fiend

and if I cannot inspire love,

I will cause fear.”

I am your Adam,

but also, the fallen angel

warning you

that I’m unafraid

because

I am what

nightmare’s fear

and I’ll be the whispers

that follow you

through the streets

while bystander’s gossip

as to what keeps them awake

and there won’t be

one mention of the name they dread

because when you left me deserted

on that grim November night,

I was born nameless

and that’s

how you’ll know it's me.

-Your Monster

I'm a hyphenated man

Half-walking, semi-erect

High-fund-aided and ill-tempered

Fully-throttled and a quarter-kami-kaze

I am semi-colonic, but full-stomached

Half-witted, but level-headed

Half-brothered and mother-smothered

Full-bodied but not-so-fasted

Hell-bent but demi-godlike

In quasi-divinity and hyper-salinity

A woman-stalker and sweet-talker

In a tongue-tied merry-go-round

I fast-walk, semi-running willy-nilly

High-fiving my half-hearted,

Red-handed, yellow-bellied, green-eyed,

Red-blooded, purple-people-eating color-blindness

I high-tail it, second-run in first-place

Coma-toes and topsy-turvy googley-eyed

In uncommon-sensical yet non-rational

Gobble-D-Gook-D-licousness

I'm a part-time also-ran

Ne'er-do-well Johnny-come-lately

Penny-wise and dollar-foolish, hip-deep into harrass:

A should-be compound-worded hyphenation

Led the horse to water.

All he does is eat.

Been slingin’ oats across my shoulder.

Wheels spin dizzy

and the hill’s lookin’ steep.

Don’t wanna be that locomotive.

’Cause I can’t make the grade.

I hung your picture.

But the wall wasn’t straight.

Been nailin’ cracks into the plaster.

Gotta keep on moving

and be the first one outta the gate.

But I ain’t gettin’ there any faster.

’Cause I can’t make the grade.

I can’t make the grade.

Life’s a game.

Don’t you know?

But the rules aren’t in the box.

Time’s a wastin’

Why you movin’ so damn slow!?

You start from where you are.

Gotta keep on playing.

Play your songs in the street.

A bit a change might find your way.

Gotta start believing

that you got some reason to be,

here.

And you just might find a day.

That you’re makin’ the grade.

when a million moments

kaleidoscope

into a cosmic rainstorm: a soft

pitter patter

that means souls see souls see souls

so i won't choose a moment

when i've chosen them all:

woodland thrones, down to the water

and always off the path.

crushing berries between our fingers

and being sunlight, being riverflow.

short chair, tall chair,

a million ways to die and all of them

intangible under the shoplights.

watching flowers grow on

telephone boxes.

stillness in darkness.

blinking lights and its not so scary

when you're around;

autumn. and vinyl scratching

like fire against the dark.

fortune, or just us.

trees and shades and woodland creatures

spinning tales like silk across

our foreheads for everyone else

to read. a crescent moon, suspended.

lights, strangers, warm mugs.

cocooned in stories and sounds.

drinking in everything like

a last breath of air.

holding time between the palm of

our hands and stretching it -

and then we're spinning,

dizzy,

spinning in different directions.

okay. balance. a cosmic

pitter patter

of souls across space. suspended,

alive.

and still spinning.