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Jang Hyun Kim Poem
In the season of May,
Thanks to the warm and gentle weather,
I gave birth to my little kittens.
Deep within a sacred sanctuary
Where no one could dare intrude,
A kitten began to cry.
"Mom, I can't see anything!"
"Am I broken? Am I blind?"
"Oh, my sweet baby, you will open your eyes soon.
Do not worry."
The mother cat let out a heavy sigh,
Her whiskers vibrating with a restless tremor.
'Perhaps it would be better if they never opened their eyes at all.
How will my babies ever endure the summer stifled by humidity and mosquitoes,
And the ruthless, biting cold of the winter ahead?'
Before long, the four little kittens
Opened their eyes to the world.
"Mom! I can see the world now!
But there are these giant beings,
Massive aliens walking past us.
Who are these aliens?"
"Yes, they are the bad ones.
Don't you dare go anywhere near them!"
Still, the kittens played lightheartedly,
Running and jumping with all their might in their sanctuary.
"Mom, I'm hungry!"
"Just wait a little bit!
I'm going out to hunt.
Don't cry out just because you're hungry, play quietly here!"
Soon, the mother cat returned with a exhausted body,
Carrying food in her mouth.
But she took the first sweet bite all by herself.
"Mom, why didn't you give it to us first? Why are you eating alone? Bad Mom!"
"Hush, my daughter! Keep your mouth shut!"
"Hmph, I hate you, Mom."
Even before the height of summer had passed,
The mother cat kept bringing food,
And she still always took the first bite herself.
Then came a deep sleep.
Only the scraps of food were left behind.
We were so incredibly hungry.
"Mom? Wake up. Huh?
I hate you, Mom! Eating all the delicious food by yourself and falling into a sweet sleep?
Hmph, I hate you!"
The next day, the mother cat
Kept sleeping that deep, unending sleep.
Only then did the kittens realize:
They had become orphans.
And they finally understood the truth.
The reason she always ate the food first
Was to check if the food left by the aliens
Was laced with rat poison.
She sacrificed herself to test it before giving it to us.
Left without our mother, we spent
The burning summers and freezing winters shivering through the dark.
"Mom, I miss you!"
Before anyone knew it, this little kitten
Had grown up to become a mother herself.
'This won't do,' she thought. 'No matter how much I think about it,
We must find a kind alien so my own babies can be protected!'
And now, in the present, I am looking after
The seventh generation of this very cat family.
I say to them,
"Oh, my sweet little babies."
And the cats say to me,
"You kind, wonderful alien!"
The moment the heavy snow begins to fall outside,
They look out the window and whisper,
"Mom, I totally hooked a sucker!
Life is so good!"
Copyright © Jang Hyun Kim | Year Posted 2026
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Jang Hyun Kim Poem
The colossal sun, a sun that seems on the verge of senile death,
Vomits violently,
Crying out that it can bear no more.
Yet we humans, and all those silent organisms, swallow its emissions,
And the dying creatures of the distant earth spring back to life.
Ah, how wondrous, how marvelous a thing.
Once more, I look upon you.
You throw up, struggling in such agony.
Even your iron-walled presence, now exhausted, collapses at last,
And the next version of me is born.
I am the "Moon."
"Rest now, you!"
Hya! My sun,
Go and taste a sweet, brief slumber.
"Go, save the Earth still trapped in the shroud of darkness!"
That is the message the sun bequeathed to me.
The raging waves, the rough voice, the wild anger—
I swallow them all whole with my moonlight.
Hya! My sun!
Rise up, hurry!
Though I, too, am spent,
I wake the exhausted sun with countless lashes of my whip,
And instantly, the sun reveals the raw welts of my lashing.
"Now I sleep. Burn your fury, make haste.
And when it grows too hard for you, I shall take your place."
Copyright © Jang Hyun Kim | Year Posted 2026
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Jang Hyun Kim Poem
The reason I write poetry
Is not because I love you.
It is because when you love someone else
And shed tears for that person,
I loved even those tears of yours—
That is why I am writing poetry now.
And my poetry exists because, when you love someone,
Right there for you,
I loved even the love of the one you love.
That is the reason I am writing poetry now.
Therefore,
Do not forget my love.
For I am already a being
Who has transcended my own love for you.
In the beginning, my existence was this:
When you so easily forgot my love,
I had to send my tears away upon the cold wind,
Shedding tears all by myself.
And when you truly loved someone else and wept,
I was a being who had to swallow my own tears in secret,
Watching your retreating figure from afar.
But now, I have transcended all such loves,
And I have become the light
That protects you.
Also, remember:
The reason I still write poetry to this moment
Is for you, and you alone,
Who are reading these very lines right now.
Copyright © Jang Hyun Kim | Year Posted 2026
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Jang Hyun Kim Poem
An old man, out of nowhere,
Brought waste paper to me and begged me to buy it.
"What is the waste paper?"
How on earth could I answer him?
While all kinds of steaks and ice creams are by my side,
Yet I, too, know the sweat embedded in that waste paper;
I know I cannot escape this reality.
I guess it must be the sweat of many lives,
The scent of earth, and a wound where dreams are cut,
Or perhaps it is an unnamed blanket of my own.
The waste paper discarded by someone—
It is my dream, my hope, and my warmth in the deep winter chill.
A runaway cat, discovering me, who was once its butler,
Mews at me:
"Why are you there? Leaving your warm room far behind,
Why are you here with me?"
The waste paper is the cat’s home itself;
Perhaps I have stolen its shelter for the night,
As I gently pitch my tent alongside the paper.
To the cat that was once my family, this might be a betrayal,
Or perhaps, the butler's proud, ultra-luxury hotel.
The cat and I were born the same,
Under the same care of parents, writhing without knowing,
We are all the same.
The crying of the cat,
The silent, breathless sound of its paw pads,
To me, they all look like the same human being.
Copyright © Jang Hyun Kim | Year Posted 2026
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Jang Hyun Kim Poem
At 6 AM, when the smartphone’s harsh alarm rings,
The world that will soon unfold before me waits.
“Come forward, my believers.”
We stand in a long line
Before the gates of the temple.
Some smoking, some sipping coffee,
And others caught in hurried phone calls.
At last, the temple gates swing open,
And I desperately gulp down coffee like holy water.
The boss enters the meeting room.
With a report in one hand, and an invisible crucifix clutched in the other.
His sermon is long, but the conclusion is always brief.
(The conclusion: “Repent!”)
Praise is as rare as a printer’s paper jam,
But criticism is as precise as an alarm clock.
Success bursts into flames under his holy name like lightning,
While mistakes must be reflected upon with tears of repentance.
Meetings drag on like endless worship,
And our notes pile up like sacred scriptures.
The moment he asks, “Is this the best you can do with a report?”
My new goals are hollowly reset back to the beginning.
His questions are like the Riddle of the Sphinx;
The answer is always hidden on page 6 of yesterday's minutes.
Yet, if I dare propose a brilliant idea, he smiles and says,
“Ah, I have been thinking about that since long ago.”
Lunch supposedly offers freedom of choice,
Except we must whip the speed of our own tongues
To match the frantic rhythm of his throat,
And the loud, crushing crunch of his chewing.
Still, I think to myself:
I am not truly me; I am only an existence meant for you.
Today again, bound by the shackles called his “Vision,” I march forward.
When the clock chimes for freedom, the temple lights dim,
And we prepare to return to our own small universes.
“Ah, I must hurry home to see my baby kitten!”
The very moment I lift my heavily crushed seat from the chair,
The boss proclaims:
“We have a team dinner tonight. Attendance is mandatory for everyone.
Consider it an extension of work. Your performance review is coming up soon, isn't it?
Ahem, ahem.”
‘I prayed so hard today, yet I am cast into hell after all.’
“My Lord, why hast Thou truly forsaken me to this inferno?”
And so, only in my wild imagination, do I cry out:
Oh, my dearest boss, in the name of the Lord,
“It is you who must repent!”
Copyright © Jang Hyun Kim | Year Posted 2026
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Jang Hyun Kim Poem
Your image is engraved within my eyes,
Your scent is hidden within my breath.
Your memory is carved into every step I take.
Yet, standing here before the vast blue Atlantic,
I am less than a single grain of sand,
On this beach that lies momentarily asleep.
Copyright © Jang Hyun Kim | Year Posted 2026
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Jang Hyun Kim Poem
In the chapel, the pastor keeps preaching
The exact same words over and over.
"Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened!"
He claims that the more wealth you possess,
The heavier your shoulders become.
"Lighten your shoulders!"
He says a tithe of one-tenth is worse than a lack of faith,
Commanding us to offer nine-tenths instead.
Wait, what? What about my kitten's kibble money?
"Put down your vain, expensive car this instant
And come to me! Do you not have a two-wheeled bicycle?"
He barks that the gas-guzzling hippo is no longer needed,
Vanity of vanities, all is vanity!
"Leave behind the lover you are flirting with!
Does it not waste your emotions and your wealth?
Come to me!"
Wait, what? Am I supposed to live all alone then?
Being so innocent, I believed it all and put it into action.
And before I knew it, I ended up drowning in loans.
Like a cat chasing after its prey,
Debt chases after me at the speed of light.
The pastor then tosses a remark at me,
Saying hunger is far better than fullness.
"The true meaning of 'Come to me, all you who are burdened'—
Have you finally realized it now?"
Yes, I have truly realized it.
That you were nothing but a cult leader.
Meanwhile, our precious seven-generation cat
Is growing thinner and thinner,
And my once hopeful eyes
Have become just like the eyes of a frozen pollack
Left forgotten inside a deep freezer.
Copyright © Jang Hyun Kim | Year Posted 2026
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Jang Hyun Kim Poem
A lonely, thick stream of rain, as if carrying all the pain of the world,
Wakens the dark morning sleep hidden within those softly spread clouds.
An autumn-dark rainfall rushes down, as though to comfort our grief.
Even that single bird cannot defy the power of nature, they say—
A force that still slips past our reaching hands.
Wrapping around this darkness once more, that pitiful stream of rain—
Whose sorrow is it carrying, that it wishes to dance so wildly before the poor?
Is it trying to hear the silent, twisted outcry of the voiceless?
What kind of tears are gathered inside this rainfall,
That it tries to hand down its tear of sorrow to a new life striving to live?
Embracing the pain yet again,
Where is this foolish touch of the rain heading now,
Carrying these vast, wide tears as if to soothe those who mourn?
A trembling bird, having surrendered to sorrow,
Drifts away silently down the river.
The reason the unstoppable rain rushes toward us—
Could it be that, within the silent outcry left behind by the waves,
It wishes to wash away, to take away, the other "You" weeping inside of me?
Copyright © Jang Hyun Kim | Year Posted 2026
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Jang Hyun Kim Poem
Over the Rainbow Bridge,
I gaze upon you as you pass away.
You, who are departing,
You, whom my hands can no longer reach.
Your death is grander than a first love,
And my sorrow is fiercer than an unrequited one.
“Goodbye, my baby.”
In your pain, you feel the beat of my heart,
Receiving my tears inside of yours.
In the end,
Your very last breath
Departs, embracing me.
“My sweet cat,
When I open the gate at the doors of Heaven,
You must come out to greet me.
Promise me. All right?”
Inside the storm clouds that seem to pierce a thousand years,
It finally swallows me whole.
At that instant, the light of the Rainbow Bridge
Blazes like a flame,
Consuming me into its light.
At last,
When I open the gate,
I meet you at the edge of the Rainbow Bridge.
The black mark under your nose, your trembling body—
Everything remains just as it was.
“Hello, Maru.”
You melt into my arms,
And I hold you close.
Through a silent gaze,
We reaffirm through each other's existence
That long wait and the agony of parting.
And then, we know.
Whether departing or leaving behind,
In the end, we shall meet again.
Copyright © Jang Hyun Kim | Year Posted 2026
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Jang Hyun Kim Poem
Even though I know I love you,
The reason I must let you go
Is the fear that you might drift far away
Before you even notice what is in my heart.
Even though I love you,
The reason I cannot bring myself to confess
Is the dread that the wound left upon my own heart
Might be far greater than any burden you would bear.
Even though I love you,
The reason I have never once held your hand
Is the fright that my haste might drive you away,
Leaving my calls met with your silent distance.
The reason I keep my watch over you,
Always keeping a careful distance,
Is so that if you ever leave my side to love another
And find yourself broken, I can be the flower that plucks away your grief.
If I am ever to love someone again in the days to come,
It will never be just anyone,
But it will be for you, and you alone—
To become the eternal sky that unfolds forever above you.
Copyright © Jang Hyun Kim | Year Posted 2026
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