Coffee Pot and Spoon

‘Poetry & Prose by Poet, Cheolsung Lee’

Coffee Pot and Spoon



The eyes lose their vision
the ears lose their hearing
the tongue is filled with nicotine,
and I am not there.
I’m not
I’m not
there, the place that drank me down long ago
that beat me, made me cry, and enraged me.
I’m here, in the empty room with the light off.
Rage fades and becomes a thorn, and the thorn breaks,
dropping into the ash tray.
I speak.
My lips move mechanically.
“I’m not.”
“I’m not.”
And then the clocks speak.
The clocks talk about
breakfast, lunch, dinner,
The table speaks, and
the side dishes speak.
When I open the book,
the letters speak.
The letters dare to tell of
the old days,
the past,
history
my roots
before I was born
which I don’t know.
When I close the book,
the cool wind blows.
At noon, the clock
on the tower speaks.
It speaks of breakfast and lunch and dinner and
breakfast and lunch and dinner.
The coffee pot speaks.
The spoon laughs.
My stomach laughs
my bowels laugh
and my anus laughs.
The wind blows in the alley in the morning.
The boy is missing one leg, 
and the girl is singing a popular song.
The eyes trying to create an incident
wipe away the incident.
The shops shut their doors.
My anus shuts its doors.
Bloody toilet paper lies on the street.

printed in the poetry collection Faces Upon the Dining Table