Carl Atteniese

Why

Why are you smiling, Miss
So very brightly

Why are you shining
So very much

Must it be
So remorsefully so

That in lieu of depth
With the ones we gave much to

We must settle for the shallow, and imagined pleasures of smiles

In passing

Because I know better
than to involve myself again
In what seems nice

Mando

We

Are all waiting
Expecting
And anticipating

Can’t see the future

And isn’t that good

We’ve a hard enough time seeing one another

Mando

Mother

What you teach her
Will make or break her
Resurrect to
Happiness or
Forsake her

About the world
And of heaven
Make her life cake
Or bread
Unleavened

More than this
You make a
Paradise
Or hell

From what you
Believe
And what you tell

What you let her find for
Herself, let her partake of
Or leave upon the shelf

Will make in her a mind
A girl open and free
Or a prisoner in a jail
She’ll be

Mando

Bag

Is it “brand-new”, when your ‘in it’
Like panties
Or shades
Boots, or
Eyes

Does it
Change you
Transform you
Re-arrange you
Hide you or confide in you

Mando

Freedom

To be lost
To be found
To rest
To cry
To fear
To be kept from dying

To almost dream
To wonder
To not know
And not have it matter

Mando

Time

It’s nothing
A measurement

But the great scientist
Said otherwise

It’s not money
It’s moments of love

Making beauty or loss

Mando

Kyonggi Do

It’s certainly friendly
And very congenial
Kind and cozy
And not demean-ial

In Seoul or Suwon
In Chooncheon, Kangwan, too
When Koreans are nice
They’re near familial
It’s true

Today the woman at the post office
Was friendly like a grandmother
Or an aunt

I wanted to leave a box there
And she most politely told me
“You can’t”

With the taxi-driver I felt
Obliged
To apologize
For bringing food into his car
He asked right away
“You Had no time for lunch?”
So I’d told him what I’d done
‘Thus far’
He’d actually inquired
And I didn’t mind

This care for one another
Makes life less blind
For we can see
What people are about
And that way we can be
More kind

Mando

Travelers

Have a some different purpose
Have quite a different view
Have a different energy

Concerns from me
And You

They’re from
A different country
In common to them all
They’re not from here and
They’re not from there, so
They tend not to see so small

Have a sort of simpatico
Have a spontaneity, too

And when you are
A traveler, you
See the me
In You

Nothing

Like a cozy hot Korean Meal
With a friend from Fukuoka

Trilingual conversation
On a cold night

Such A Healing
Situation

In The stalls of old
Dong Dae Mun
“Eye shopping”
And bargaining

Passing time
The way one should
In momentary
Inspiration

Never

Am I ever alone
Unconnected
Unlinked
Un-noticed
In-synced