shawl

She could mean a half hundred things with it.  Leaving the shawl
on the passenger seat while I parked the car at the side street.
I wouldn't have noticed, until she came back and said "I left something."
And pointing at the red shawl beside me, she smiled that smile
beautiful and warm in the December night.

the mermaid gardens

The mermaid wakes 
to a garden chilled by rain.
She remembers
the last morning by the sea
on a photo.  She was sitting 
crosslegged, red blanket on sand
surrounded by blue 
sails in the background.
The last time her lover
mouthed her name.
This morning, the dragon 
wing begonia flowers 
brim with seeds.
She fingers them
with eyes.


                                            photo by and poem for ricci

"imagine"

And because my wife is here, I would like to say I'm sorry for the times when I wasn't what I supposed to be, said Ray in words that in one way or another must have been like it.  He then took his saxophone and, beside two guitarists and a pianist, began.  No words, just music.  And the entire Solidarity affair held in abeyance.  I found myself finding the words:



Imagine there's no heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people living for today

Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people living life in peace

You, you may say 
I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one
I hope some day you'll join us
And the world will be as one

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people sharing all the world

You, you may say 
I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one
I hope some day you'll join us
And the world will live as one

catching stars

One of my better memories was on a rooftop, on reclining summer chairs nights in the middle of October, November, December.  Those were a long time ago.  Up the flights of stairs, we brought cheap wine, a couple of glasses, a tea light.  And she talked about many things, growing up and childhood.  I listened to her voice, looking at silhouettes of rain tree canopies moving with the breeze.    

waiting for our turn

How the young lives forever, not seeing
beyond an hour or two, seeing a year at most.

The years, at the onset, can stretch so long
every thing was possible.

Until father asked to keep away his white hair.
And mother made gentler by wear.

I look at the mirror and at the crow's lines
that appear even as I smile.

A weariness.  A heaviness.  This body
having lived and seen too many lives.

geminid meteor shower

when was the last time you really took time to look at stars?  look up and stare at the night sky and wonder about those lights.  so many light years away.  a literal seeing of the past in the form of a speck of light.  when i was in third grade, every night i would lay on my back and watch the clear night sky for hours, figure out constellations, memorize star-speck positions, wondering about Big Bang, black holes and the actual size of the universe; all the while hoping to discover a new star the scientists must have missed.  i made charts and diagrams, drawing positions of constellations as seen from an angle, made notes on how they "move" by the hour.  a kid dreaming.                                      why did i stop? when it dawned that nobody i knew knew how to be an astronaut.  

when was the last time you really took time to look at stars?  

this friday night (december 13-14), many of the stars will fall.  the geminid meteor shower.

between four and six

Afternoons on Mondays and Thursdays between four and six,
I teach a class of "internally displaced."  Especially opened 
for university students who survived the storm, who wanted to
          move          forward         with the Haiyan on their backs.  

Their stories of back home are still on our TVs.  
On prime time news, their gutted city and wiped out towns, 
their people, families, love ones           bodies 
unidentified in body bags       while the rest 

of us watch while eating our dinner.  How art is a therapy. 

 A week ago in an earthquaked city still pitch dark
without electricity, even fireflies, children held on
to Crayolas and brushes to story-tell.  The artists 
supposed to show them how, ended as audience instead

or bearers of stories of stones the children had carried
like body bags on their backs.  Losing their parents,
siblings, friends.  Some or all of the people they knew.
Horrors no longer unfamiliar to us.

What is the human spirit really made of?

In class, the conversation of the day was Another Country,
a story about the many kinds of displacement, 
the many kinds of understanding      home and       
love.  Its varied complications.  Nobody talks

about death       and the drowned bodies on the streets
the looting, the aftermath, the forced migrations,
homesickness like palpable emptiness       
in this another country with its strange language.

How art is therapy.  How it tears raw

wounds just trying to heal         a day at a time.
A kind of patient confrontation.  "Too soon," I had said
to the student guidance counselor whose eyes
have long been softened on the edges by blunt blows.

She said yes and no.

mirror

it  struck me, just as i was about to leave the office, in the restroom, looking up after washing my hands, and seeing myself on the mirror, with the indistinguishable light from the very very late sun mixed 

with the onset of dusk.  how i folded my crisp sleeves at the elbows, the wristwatch half glinting, how, while the rest of what i own shades of white and blue, the only pink shirt so suddenly reminded me.  

a moment, when the face on the mirror is of someone older, a once-upon-a-long-time-ago childhood hero.  wasn't i told many times how we could be so much alike.  the smile, maybe, other expressions 

on the open face, two left feet, an awkwardness when dancing, humor, carefully tempered temper and impatience, a proud sharpness when angry...how i carefully reminded myself to constantly remember

how he was so i would not follow.  consciously not follow and be better.  like a constant keeping of distance from a dark corner shadow.












  

the ephemeral

there is constant death one undergoes every waking moment.  a death and a rebirth happening in nuances, so that one changes, ever so subtly.  noticeable only after a certain time has elapsed, a certain event has happened to mark a kind of ritual.  even though the constancy is there.  every waking moment.  or even when one sleeps, in dreams.

the self, then, is always an ephemeral state.  always in transit, in passing.  and all the thoughts it bears, and by bearing the thoughts i mean both the carrying of it and the giving birth to it, are fleeting.  formless.  weightless, except when they are forged into form.  and by forging, i mean to wield it, to wrought it into shape.  be it action, or art, or word.

the word as a vessel for the ephemeral, else, the abyss of nothingness.  or is the latter really?  sometimes, when it is late like this, the hour that is both very very late at night of now and very very early in the morning of now, i remember Plato's immaterial world.

how do you divide time

do you read every day? a beginning writer asks by way of conversation.

i try, i say.  not telling him of the three books on the bedside table, the five on the next tabletop, the new one in my bag i am just beginning to read the introduction.

*

how do you write? i once asked a friend, who was a mother, a wife, a lawyer, a writer, a graduate student.
i've forgotten her reply.















 
 

the day begins early

the day begins early, as it always does.  the body clock in time with the dogs' and dawn.  some times, it even wakes itself before anything, that while the eyes adjust in the just faintly light sky that peeks through the curtains, the wrist with its indiglo watch, like a blind automaton, brings itself close to the eyes.  check the hour.  still dark.  still not halfway through the beginnings of morning.  but the body stands itself from the bed, feet feeling for the room slippers, movement.  the house still asleep.  the dogs each open half an eye, half an ear.

                                                                                        

Once I Claimed Sorrow

Once, I claimed sorrow greater than anyone else’s. The world
was as it is now. Corpses of children loaded into trucks

each day. Change only ever coming in narratives. Gas leaks.
Landslides. Of course a tornado matters more than the antiseptic

room of patients in the nursing ward. Of course it matters
what you’re dying of. Lupus, for example, is a word

no one wants on his gravestone. Better “bravery.”
Or a quote by some bearded European thinker, saying

all we are is people. See, the first thing I’ll do when someone I love
walks that beaten path is quarantine their closet.

Then smell a piece of clothing each day. While watching a sitcom.
Or while walking Belle, my dog, who uses scents to determine

who she loves. Let death never blind us. Disappearance
is always beautiful and flowers are always blooming.

If you cannot find it in you to tell that laughing child
swinging in the monkey bars to stop, perhaps you can save

an equal kindness for grown-ups. True, we are not children.
We are far more worn. Look how we lie: Once, my old man said

that the great earthquake in this country
probably swayed a daffodil continents away

in the perfect direction, creating a beauty that can fill
whatever fracture it made in our souls. Probably,

they are wrong. The deepest sorrows are not fractures.
They are holes within the body. But even still

earthquakes do happen in the context of flowers;
and flowers sometimes bloom in minefields.

Too much happiness can be treated by thinking
of the man in the coldest place on Earth.

And what can I say about sadness
apart from how I cannot have it all to myself.

The world has not changed, but now chances are
my sorrow is average. I am most important

only when starlight passes through my irises
after thousands of years of travel; and where I dispense it

may be the greatest ripple I can manage
in whatever sea we’ve been thrown in.

This is not a call to be humble. I do not mean
to empower anyone.  This is just a prayer in its rawest form.

This is an instruction to befriend your executioner. Or no.
This is nothing but a howl. A cry. A gasp. 

A yelp.






by Gian Lao

remains of the beginning of day

3 slices of toast
3 slices of ripe papaya
2 kinds of cheese
half a bottle of lemon concentrate
coffee, dregs
some thin slices of carrots
half a glass of water
two dogs, pretending to go back to sleep
the quiet of the morning
faint imaginary sounds of birds
sound of a leaving plane
occasional sound of rain drop on some roof
a faraway dog bark
















 
 

A Wednesday Morning

From the window I could see the hairlines of soft rain.  Slanted by breeze.  This morning, when it was still dark and the dogs were let out, the chill was December.  That end of the year with a kind of brightness people mostly call cheer.  

It is sunup now and I still attempt to write that which I lost last night.  I do not look at the clock but it does not leave my mind.  Only the dogs are patient.  They have long, short days for dreaming.  Perhaps, of running around with their humans.  Their tails wagging with glee.















 

after city

The children are dead.
The news does not say
even though their bodies
are all around.  In parts,
in missing wholes.
The entire city has begun
to smell of loss.  There are 
arms, dismembered, waving
at Red Cross trucks carrying relief.
Too many bare feet, caught 
cold in the act of running.
Everybody is howling.
But there are not enough names.

At the centers, the lines are long
for food, for water, for medicine.
Also for calling God.
But the telecommunications 
are all down.  
And the entire city is dark.








(Typhoon Haiyan/Yolanda, Philippines)
 







by shane

birth-day

Here it is a travesty.
That life goes on for a number.
That celebrations are called 
for some other reasons
if one does not care to remember.
In another place, entire towns
and cities are awashed.
Only the memory have names.
Too many bodies are found,
cold and strange. The loved ones
remain missing.  Underneath
all the mud and debris where 
those who survive must stand 
go on living.





(Typhoon Haiyan/Yolanda, Philippines)




by shane





















 

rocks, water, light

photo by A.L. Abanes (may you and your family be safe)

at what point the anger? 

the resignation, the calm? 

how aptly it was said: 

when you know the storm is coming, 

the quiet has a shimmer. 

and shimmer it did; and Haiyan 

took many lives: children, 

men, women.  

no mention of countless pets,

no word about lovers

only strangers with unknown names

in a city nearly wiped unrecognizable.

was it only half a year ago i came 

backpacked to visit and stand

to admire the sunset at their pier?

no news, only reports of dead 
bodies in evacuation centers,

trying to explain the unknowing-ness

of storm surges. of divine plans.

but the footage of a man

the body of his six-year-old 

daughter in his arms, cold.

a shimmering light with it all.

  

to close eyes and sleep

to close eyes and sleep, she says.  telling me a direction to go.  my head has been heavy, and i finally took the pill.  and for once, i stretch myself on the couch.

de luz

Imagine dos orillas en dos islas diferentes, separadas en el tiempo por exactamente medio día: así, cuando una soñaba despierta, el otro estaba a la deriva en al sueño.

                                                                    *

Las nubes se incendian
como enamorados
desnudos en el rio.
Cuando caiga la tarde
se convertiran en un rio de estrellas.










                                                                                                           

(Marjorie Evasco & Alex Heites)

truskawkowy

there may be a sense of comfort from uncertainty.  if the weather permits.  i ran this morning and collected thoughts along the way, had they been pebbles i wouldn't have made it, even a block.  maybe it is better to say 

i plucked thoughts along the way.  the weather was gray with a bite in the breeze.  the sky was slate.  a few days ago there had a been a strong quake that broke down hundreds-year-old churches.  not counting the real houses of the living.  

i went to see a part of the city and the traces of earth-moving.  she recalled the sound of glass straining on the 19th floor, and the narrow escape staircases swaying.  the quick escalator 

couldn't move.  a crippled woman had to be carried through the flights.  still there were cars on the streets.  in another place, there were no more bridges.  in yet another, tons of rain.  and flood.  isn't it too easy to say 

all of these are a reckoning?  the cab driver said calmly.  there was a cross on his dashboard.  his radio airs an advertisement for floorwax.  in between the spaces of every so few hours 

were aftershocks.  the national media feasted for sympathy.  but in the meantime, in some places, there was talk on the importance of mayonnaise despite a protein living.  a well-taught 

young conservationist pointed how egg yolks were used to build the heritage churches.  this, of course, was all well-known.  still, every body went on living.  and in a pad, a cheese and wine party with cold cuts.  

a german who was stranded in hongkong arrived exhausted in the country.  and wondered why the people play mournful love songs.  some prefer to take photos of themselves.

i looked from a high point at the capital and thought of bubbles.  random and uncertainty.  like a child who died at four.  or a dog born from a stray to be a stray to die unloved and starved.  a body without burial on a public high way.

sometimes this country makes me very sad.  and while a good number debate about the future, i return with my luggage and kept fever.  she gives me medicine for colds, which i refuse, preferring water and rest.

how a friend is so happy to give a sachet.  From home, she says, reading aloud the ingredients.  skrobia, regulator kwasowości: kwas cytrynowy, 1,1% sok z limonki (syrop glukozowy, koncentrat soku z limonki), ekstrakt z czarnej marchwi i hibiskusa, aromat, substancja wzbogacająca: witamina C, sól, barwnik: annato.  but there is no truskawkowy, she says, pointing at the strawberries as advertised on the cover.

what are words

maybe they are

like a woman's 

cupped hands

holding space

for the fleeting.







-shane

tattoo

in graduate school years ago, we thought of getting inked for when we finally would succeed.  h* was doing the management of politics, j* was doing clinical psych, i was doing art.  h* had a series of girls who'd visit the dorm after his soccer, until i was finally afraid to greet them, afraid to say the wrong name.  h* would get engaged and married first years before finishing school. j* would travel weekly, post pictures, as then he had eaten chocolates and played violin in the middle of papers.  why do you do clinical, i asked him once over breakfast.  the same reason you do what you do, he said.  did j* got his one-way mirror glass house the way he said he would?  i look at my left arm now and see the many studies i've had on its skin, the attempts of corporeal permanency.  what about that poem in the book starring the three of us in that university dorm at *?

about the why we live

in another time, the technique was all that mattered:  how to construct the lines, how to cut them, how to end; also, what medium to use: wax or wood or metal; what frames, what movements of light or line; or how big the canvas; is it better in graphite, in oil, or latex; what mixed media to use; what texture the background, the color, the chiaroscuro; should it be two or three dimensional, or should it be in relief or in double images; should it also include an installation, a center piece, a performance?  where will the exhibit be held?

in that another time what was often not thought was the why.

why do you ____?
what do you ____ about?
why do you ____  the way you do?

no certain answers to these of course.  only the hows are measurable.  the birth of concepts, of be-ing, no real origins as there are no real arrivals yet.  every thing in transit.  what we can only recall:  terminals where we think we came from: one point to another.  

but the nuances.  
 

the things we do not tell

the office these days has a kind of absence.  the indefatigable secretary, Gloria, has not been around for days.  almost unheard of, but yesterday.  someone said she is undergoing some heart tests, but is not confined in a hospital.  she has been uncomplaining all these time, which made me ask just how much have i been missing.

some things chosen not to be told.

one afternoon Lilia asked me to read a poem about a lake, a grandfather and a boy.  also, in another scene, the boy's sister who was left alone sitting on the lap of the grandfather.  Lilia remarked something about the horror in the poem.  i gave her a copy of a piece by Laux;and she was unable to keep.  we said nothing more.


*


there will be nine one-man shows this friday.  exhibits of selves.  on their papers, the young artists talked so much about their techniques, the how the works were made, too much of it; but too less about the real how of the craft:  the how of be-ing: the space within the armatures.






















 

ways to see

1.  i met A* in a poetry reading, she has two sons, both of them with autism, and she writes poetry.  on her page, she posts Mary Oliver and photos of her sons.  recently she tells about doing a little grocery with the boys, and posts another photo of them playing with water at their front yard.  

2.  in a documentary about children with autism, i thought about their parents and the strength of unconditional love.  maybe reasons had been asked, but expectedly no direct answers were given.  still, the carry on.

3.  a student wrote on her paper that faith is learning the imperfections and still believing in it.  i wrote nothing on the margins.

4.  when i was growing up, about eight or nine, there was a boy who was about four or five years my senior.  he was always in bed and his large frame always carried around by the small woman who was his mother.  i always wondered why he wouldn't just move himself, always wondered why his mother was always so kind.  it took many years before i understood the kindness of a big heart.  and love was not even yet mentioned.

5.  in many torn countries, there remains being a mother.  when they tell stories about carrying and giving birth and raising children in extreme conditions, it is unimaginable.  the strength of a human heart.  

6.  in the early of mornings, when flying flocks can still be seen on the sky and the new sunlight is soft, some young mothers in the neighborhood can be seen carrying their babies for sun, for vitamin D, i am reminded my own paucity. 

understanding the neighbor

W* found way to the neighbor's doorstep this morning.  raised its head to the neighbors, expecting.  anyone who knows W* knows the neighborhood children's pet.  nearly not an ounce of mean-ness on this dog, who worries me, who befriends grown strangers, adores babies and lets little children touch forehead.  the neighbor took an umbrella to hit him, who bent low in sudden fear, unexpecting violence.  i took W* and apologized to the man, for the affectionate dog who trespassed, who expected warmth from all, who must have raised his fear.

astrology

1.  maybe it is in our nature to wait--though the word nature is a loaded word and subject to arguments.  maybe we have the tendency to wait.  to while away our time waiting for something by living.  in any case, maybe we all are waiting for Godot.  who can tell.  and who can say otherwise.  there are some things we know are coming.  the inevitable.  only we don't know the when.

2.  B* passed away.  the dog of some years.  kidney failed.  there is a sense of emptiness in the house.

3.  there are many things we know, but do not think about.  the end of the world, for example.

4.  JJW reads signs in the zodiac.  a feat he showed the first time in B*.  foggy night and the group was smoking and suddenly he said "you're a ----" from out the blue.  an uncanny ability to read the signs of people.  everyone's zodiacs were guessed right.  including a brief description of the you.  and what signs were compatible with you.  and what signs would be bad for you.  i wondered:  do you right away read the person in front of you; can you right away read the lover for you.

5.  JJW recently posted a photo smiling by the Mona Lisa.















 

the orange of stones

my mother was a practical woman.  or maybe there was not much room for dreaming at the time when she was young when she had me and my sister.  a lot of time was needed to keep alive.  i've heard we've moved into war-torn place/s although she and father never told stories about it.  i've heard about long walks and trucks, but always as a word or two like the brief back of a person before she or he closes a door.  i've never knocked.  it is not in the family to ask questions.  although one time, on a clear day when i visited mother and we were outside the house, sitting on white hand-welded metal chairs, she told a story without asking. why she left the union. it was very brief. it ended before anyone could join the table.  

ferris wheel

you've never been in a ferris wheel.  and so one night we stopped at a quaint carnival in a pocket in the city and i said let's take a ride.  you were scared, and i pretended not to.  not because i was afraid of heights, but because the carnival was old, all the rides, rusty.  risky.  not unlikely that any moment something would break, people would fall.  always a third world phenomenon.  but that night, we must have been feeling brave.  you held my hand as we stepped into a cage.  the cage was closed and it felt what pigeons must feel as the wheel began to be turned and the cage was raised.  there were sounds of old machinery, sore, arthritic, beyond retirement.  still, the wheel turned and turned, faster and faster, and we saw only glimpses of stars and parts of the city made strange.  and as you held my hand conquering your fear, i try not to think of metals rods breaking, the bones of the wheel collapsing under the weight of young lovers' dreams.