Breath Becomes Life
Chiwan Choi
Los Angeles, CA

let us begin
with words that echo in the caves dripping
sweat,
with words that kill the liquor store owners

let us begin
with simple words of simpler meaning
that link the darkness that is just right,
with words that sound like
biscuit
tennis
mother
broccoli
hum

that sound the bells on the edge of the cliff,
the ringing sinking
into the foaming lips of the ocean,
camouflaged in some kind of blue
that lulls us into early sleep,
but it cannot hide the teeth,
exposed like shrapnel in the belly of a soldier,
themselves not knowing
what will be bitten and chewed,

who will take you next,
great sea of underdevelopment,

who will be diving olympic off the platform
into your waiting mouth
with the succulent blue lips of a corpse,

who, in this vacant motel called Night,
is laying on their coin inserted vibrating bed
hypnotized by the flickering of fucking
on the electric glass box,
eyes pointing south and ears pointing west,
waiting for you to crash on the sand
and make consonants that will make use
of all the vowels that they hold like cocks,

to spell out something resembling their names,

name jonathan
name methuselah
name monica
name noriko
name darius
name maggie
names that are mispronounced like my own
names that are forgotten like my own

names that have hid themselves
in the shadows of tombstones
here rests our beloved son
who was torn into bits in the war
and he was no coward.

here rests our beloved son
who was torn into bits in the war
and he was no coward.

here rests our beloved son
who was stabbed by the words that he wrote
on a yellow piece of paper.

here rests my daughter
who opened the door and walked outside to
breathe
and was raped by four men with too much dick.
she killed herself and found some peace.

let us begin to look at each other's faces,
faces that have seen many suns rise
and even more fires roar.
let us begin to let us run our hands
on your lonely knees that have cried out
like any thigh ever did.

let us begin to open the blinds
and look at the cars going by in different colors,
driven by drivers of different colors.

let us begin
to swallow bullets dangling in the ecstasy
of a violent life, a violent night.

Outside the flesh,
Inside the soul.

outside,
the woman, her cold arms wrapped around
herself,
elbow flesh dangling like testicles,
hugging what is alone,
the woman,
her miniskirt covering the black stinky vacuum
growling between her meatless thighs,
the monthly blood flowing down her legs,
staining the hose.
do not look away,
she cannot expose more.
she has shown her womanness.
she has waited for this time,
and soon ,
the fires will begin again,

and outside, a noisy death on the corner of
olympic and nowhere,
and this is where I live,
this is where I suffocate
as the walls squeeze me.

this is where a poem is born

and outside, a noisy death.

outside the flesh,
inside the wound.

the walls are meeting and forming skeletons,
to be vandalized with bloodstains and
fingerpaint.

have you slept through the night,
oblivious to your drowning in the sandbox
filled with razorblades?

have you not heard the military footsteps that
have come like a symphony through the veins of
this crippled town?

let us begin to count the blessings
stacked like creamy style corn on the shelf.
one two three thousand

million dead birds and the ants feast for they are alive.
they are singing in the crevices and holes
that our lives have left,
they are singing,

"fly me to the moon…"

sing fly me to the moon…thank you very much.
i love you all.

sing little black ants.
sing little red ants.
sing before the spiders come.
sing little vicious ants.
sing, the flood is coming
to kill every one of you.

what can save you, if not a floating orange
melody?
your lies?
your lust?
our merciful god?

there seem to be things to be sung
and others, to be known,
but the clock is heartless
the arms catapulting through you and me,
spinning like the symbol of infinity,
and it will wait for no man nor ant.
time never ran out.

time spun on itself, being chipped away.

and what was once a castle,
with giants and golden geese,
a seamless brown sculpture,
is now a pebble,
a pebble like the whole pebble population,
that cannot even dent the skull of a premature
child.
and the eyes are left, the eyes are left to graze.
eyes, seeing too much of the pus crawling
from the sewers and condominiums.
eyes, with red blood streams flowing out
like endless freeways.
eyes,
filtered through disposable plastic nightmares.
eyes.
black eyes of the yellow man,
eyes,
they are in pain.
eyes
that cannot be the windows to the soul,

instead, the mirror, instead the walls.
instead, eyes,
like the crackling shell of an egg,
hairline cracks letting the blood and vision out.
i
do not see.
i
not sleeping.
i come naked to my home,
with empty hands and a fat toad smile,
and the pubic hair curling into the center of
potential lives,
and in the center,
our wishes upon stars being torn apart,
big hoofed horses running wild in eight
directions.

i
am nothing.

i am the letter that starts invisible.

invisible man,
invisible watchtowers,
invisible fog that rolls through the city,
over the tall mirror buildings that hold
captive air conditioned air

and the words come like this,
as this woman, this aging girl,
sleeps with her eyes shut in front of me,
having never once given me the permission to
see her sleep.

let us be silent for a second.

there.
the night wakes up and stretches its arms like a
four year old
and makes shadows that hide parts of us
and you from me.

and as digital time blinks on and off on some
insignificant midnight,

my father,
towering over the engine,
hammer in his right hand, pounding the engine
into submission until the life
is pulled out;
he, my father,
sitting with a young mexican
as he waves his stubby fingers
goodbye,
so long,
see you later,

a fifty five year old grimace on his pretty face,

my mother, hands buried in the kitchen sink,
wrapped in apron like a mummy
and the meat is bleeding on the cutting board,
but I did not know she would be there.
i do not know she will be there
and above us all,
her tiny smile dangles like a candy apple.

my brother, my beloved brother,
only a piece of his coattail as he disappears
into the hallway, having returned for his
forgotten keys,
and he is the only one who speaks,

"sleep, didn't mean to wake you"

and all in all and all in them,
all alone all alone to drown in my bed,
as the ceiling cries,
and yes it is crying,
and the voice I hear is in search of me,
the voice
i
hear of the woman
who needs to save.