Heroes Everywhere

While I gesture in such minute ways
Taking notes, making comments
Your life is lived
So large

You could clean stables with a river
Banish nasty creatures
Charm a beautiful girl

The club in your hand is in mine
Simply a pen, the bald spot on my head
For you is covered with strong hair

I am not impotent, but to live
A hero’s life as you do–
My heart would explode with tension

    –Thomas Park, 2009

Empty Again

The creature, given the gift of expression
First draws the bars that kept it captive
In the same way, for the artist, it’s the empty shell,
The cage, the structure’s skeleton

Maybe the poets had hoped
To achieve notoriety
By abandoning the lines they had written

I, too, have been guilty
As advice is cheap and beauty elusive
Of making a kind of vacuum
Music that is a hum of static, no more

When it came on the radio, then
I had this question– Is this
The program in fact, or did
The station suddenly lose power

So I will try to dig deeper
In a time that seems post everything
To find thoughts worth sharing

    –Thomas Park, 2009

To M.

In the old stories, even the Gods
Made mistakes. This time, there were no
Gods, only human judges– and I was
Rewarded a title of sorts, called
“Pithy”.

Back then, I measured success
With high school grades then college, planning
Ahead that far, no further,
However with some degree of intensity.

But you, M., wrote for the age
We were in, not for some sleepless future
Grad student. Your stories were
Impassioned yet restrained.

To really understand a poem, see
As it unfolds, how things change.
Similarly, I, with my small South Side
Apartment, and modest income

Marvel at your success as a lawyer
And wonder once and again
For though you were not deemed best student
Perhaps you were the best practitioner

    –Thomas Park, 2009

Thomas Park has been writing for many years. He studied English literature at Northwestern University in the early ‘nineties. At this time, Thomas enjoys writing and reading clear, thoughtful poems. He can be reached at: mystifiedthomas (at) gmail (dot) com.