"How did I go from that little five year old, always happy and always laughing to...this?" — anonymous
10 am and
I’m nursing a hangover
from a night at the tables,
heading back along
the mighty Han river
on the Seoul subway,
station after station
swishing past,
people, sad people
getting on, getting off
going about their
sad, daily duties.
It’s all about duty.
We live and die in its name.
I sit and watch the stations
with names I can’t pronounce
pass by.
I sit and watch the sad people
with their shiny sad objects
sitting in their sad way
looking sadly
with their sad smiles
sadly going about their business
hoping for just some light
to come in
and make their duty warmer.
The stations we pass
have big glass barriers
to keep the people waiting
from throwing their sad lives
onto the tracks and
this thought, this solution
makes me even sadder
than the way they sadly look.
Why don’t people ask why
so many are throwing themselves
into the unknown
preferring this to that which
they know?
The people who make
the big decisions don’t
want any interruptions
in the duties they demand
of the sad people
on these sad trains.
So they build these barriers.
No news is good news.
The train stops and I get off
feeling better as
the cold air
off the Han
hits my cheeks
and wakes me.
Back in the day I once
took a helicopter ride
over Seoul and along the Han,
it’s 27 elegant bridges
swishing past.
The bridges didn’t have
any nets to keep the
27 people each day
from jumping.
These quiet suicides
don’t matter for they
don’t interrupt much and
in the wider scheme of
sad things
I guess they make the world
a less sad place.
I’m not sure if that’s
good or bad.
It’s just dutiful Seoul …
Why don’t they just build
a quiet, sad place to
silently die? Or
invent a nice on/off switch?
Next week
I’ll make the same trip
to the casino again
and report back
on the level of sadness
like they do on the news
the air quality
suggesting how good it
might be to breathe.
Seoul Sadness