day before strawberries

black saturday...




again, a plane ride away.  back in the city that is not half as strange except.  every one is away.  in places far and calling.  but every thing else.  they remain the same.  the streets and the rain trees' flowers.  the shops, no matter only half awake.  and this strange lolling of this another tongue.  a language reminding me of cottonwood bursting forth cottons.

two million stories

what stories do we keep stored in tin cans, clear glass bottles, and other airtight containers? 

two million stories.


this afternoon, cloudless sky was fishbowl blue.  you would need to see it to believe.  the sky is a paper sheet.  the world a diorama.  

tonight, an orange full moon rose i wanted you to see it.

a million memories.

and more than a half hidden in the cupboards.

















 

if there is no other shore

On Prayer







You ask me how to pray to someone who is not.
All I know is that prayer constructs a velvet bridge
And walking it we are aloft, as on a springboard,
Above landscapes the color of ripe gold
Transformed by a magic stopping of the sun.
That bridge leads to the shore of Reversal
Where everything is just the opposite and the world is
Unveils a meaning we hardly envisioned.
Notice:  I say we; there, every one, separately,
Feels compassion for others entangled in the flesh
And knows that if there is no other shore
They will walk that aerial bridge all the same.








Czeslaw Milosz

Translated by Robert Hass 

I Learned That Her Name Was Proverb

I Learned That Her Name Was Proverb




And the secret names
of all we meet who led us deeper
into our labyrinth
of valleys and mountains, twisting valleys
and steeper mountains-
their hidden names are always,
like Proverb, promises:
Rune, Omen, Fable, Parable,
those we meet for only
one crucial moment, gaze to gaze,
or for years Know and don’t recognize

but of whom later a word
sings back to us
as if from high among leaves,
still near beyond sight

drawing us from tree to tree
towards the time and the unknown place
where we shall know
what it is to arrive.






by Denise Levertov

elephant memory

the old man on the bench was the sexiest old man in the world.  observable still, the clear traces of his hard chiseled-like brawn.  i told him so and he laughed.  must have had heard it many times before.  in spite of tropical heat, where we were was cool, and eternally springing, and green.  and this, i also told him so.  he agreed and we both got into talking.  about the weather.  hinterland farmer, the sexiest old man in the world, and the writer.   i told him:  i was up in the boondocks some days ago.  you still pan gold here?  yes.  and so, more talking.  this time, about his cows.  and the multipurpose Co-op.  and their fresh milk deal.  of course.  we both knew this: us both trying to skirt away.  if possible.  such a beautiful breezy May.

i took out no pen, no paper, no recorder.  and asked him instead about the dust road beside the cliff, from where we just passed.  how long has it been there?

oh a long time, he said.  that's where the wartime soldiers took my wife to be never seen again.































        

slow dancing in a finite time

i come to babysit the little boy only months ago my sister called me about.  i was still living in two different cities bridgeable by plane.  nearly midnight when we were on the phone, that time:  she, breathless telling she was pregnant; how mom was going to take it; i, looking up, looking for stars.  in the nighttime, her voice 

over the phone was not unlike how we whispered in the dark.  long after the house was quiet.  two million stories.  including the ones about the new boy, the new movie, the new poster, the old.  how sometimes i scared her with stories, of ghosts and goblins.  how she believed, not knowing how i, too, frightened myself.  

how i told her over the phone:  this is how to tell mom.  begin, 1, 2, 3.  it'd get worse.  but you'd pull through.  it'd be okay.  i come to babysit the little boy only months ago my sister called me about.  she said, are you free today?  i said okay.  no matter the paperwork to reevaluate.  she said, your papers, you can bring.  

i said okay.  the morning is crisp.  she said she'd be out just quick. so i come to babysit the little boy only months ago my sister called me about.  it is fast asleep.  it is up and around.  it laughs and we run around.  we peekaboo, we roll on the ground.  it comes to me.  and holds its arms up wide.  carry me.  carry me.  i carry 

this little boy only months ago my sister called me about.  i carry it and it holds me close.  head on my shoulder, arms around.  i loop a music and slowly, we slow dance around.  this little boy my once-upon-a-time-little sister called me about.



















   
        

water

some things can be cleared by water.   wash your face then look at the mirror.  see, it is not the same.   some things can be cleared by water.  wash your hands before you eat.  

some things can be cleared by water.  immerse yourself into a basin, into a tub, into a pool, into a sea.  wash.  this how to rise.

some things can be cleared by water.  wash your feet before you  sleep.

beautiful things

some days are not for beautiful things.  no matter how blue and clear the sky, no matter a butterfly.  no matter a dog sleeping close at your feet.  the balmy breeze passing by






















 

dear hans

in less than forty lunch conversations, surely we will agree.  although there hasn't been any disagreement to begin with.  in the first place.  there will never be any argument.  between two people who refuse.  seeing the same wide array of hues:  such things:  diversity, plurality.  the multiplicity of lenses with which to view reality.  for instance.  take any fantasy.  and let lilia draw hers to recreate it.  give her a piece.  of manila paper.  some crayons.  and when the paper tears, the wrong crayon used, refuse the explanations.  insist on phenomenology.  how things are, as perceived.  as the way it is.  how we both see her:  treading on eggshells.  how she is asked.  as again.  as again.  as again:  what is your awareness?  

we do not interpret, hans.  keep your memories of munich. 

we do not insist personal realities. 

foretelling

at any given time a conversation can turn dark.  mention malachy.  or catastrophe.  or asteriod.  cassandra heard, and no one believed her.  but the physicists.  and they make no secret of such things.

in the meantime, everyone's children grow.  

at times in the yard, i prune.   and even though the plants know this, mornings after the mist lifts, they spring.  green.  with a bud for flowering.

mist and green, early morning

palimpsests

some days ago, two young men made a performance called "white wall".  it was made of a white sheet held high and wide, with two cuts on it where the men placed their lips and talked between themselves.  the audience were meant to overhear.  their conversation short: about how nothing signifies something; how something could be anything; and anything, nothing; and how even nothing means something; and something, anything...finally the men ended their play, possibly out of breath chasing their own conversation's tail.  i thought about bertolt brecht.  and waiting for godot.  someone from the audience whispered virginia woolf.  i said nothing, thinking of the young man who thought of the performance.  how difficult it is to be "new" these days.  how the world must be older than we think.  older than it lets on...

yesterday, a korean artist brought out her painting of a girl whose head was lost inside the clouds inside an upturned fish bowl.  the goldfishes swimming on air outside the glass, swimming beside her ears. her other painting was of a girl with extra large rabbit ears.  surrealism.  how she recalls dali in the background of her figures, in the strokes and colors she chose.  how her portraits call frida in the length of her women's necks, the slopes of their shoulders, the immobile staring of their heads. 

today, i begin reading The Portland Vase... 

 

  

 

 

expression. of peace.

after red


i tell my lover i am going to do painting today.  i will go to the hardware store and buy the paint brushes.  flat ones intended for walls.  those that are meant to color.  and are unapologetic.  i do not care if sio montera says not to use house paints.  that they are not meant for art.  great or otherwise.  i will get a few pieces of good wood.  some nails.  a hammer.  a white canvas.  and build myself a frame.  large.  and rest it on the wall.  i have a stroke in mind.  it is blue.  and slightly convex.  concave.  when seen from the other end.  center bottom thrown to top far right.  i mean it like a wave.  of something else.  maybe a part.  of a circle.  even though it trails away

tell me about your self in darkness

tell me about your self in darkness.  it is better.  truth in its self-depreciating version, easier between strangers.  this, as much a confession.  in a room, turn off the lights.  and let the shadows play.  the outlines of leaves and silhouettes of dim slanted light from the window.  in darkness, we are strangers without faces without names.  and the walls that is our body collapse without restraints.  in darkness, we merely are psyches.  with wear and tear.  closed in the seen eternal space.  reminiscent of eternity.  no matter how illusory.  there is no line, there is no body.  only voice and breathing.  and a small lock, with its tentative key, from a deluge of eidetic remembering.  

age and strangeness

in case we forget, the body remembers its age.  and in case the body forgets, the self encased in the body remembers its wears.  

such a thin, thin line--the line as again, its own illusion--between the self and the body.  

the body, the poor body, naive like a child, always attempts to erase the years hoarded in the mind.  how it attempts to clean after itself. 

how the self waits in knowing for the inevitable.  the lines to appear on the skin. waits in certainty for the body to age 

as the self has aged long before the body resigns.

the persistence of the every day

a student in the university committed suicide yesterday.  because she couldn't pay the fees.



and so she becomes news now.  the activists rallying behind her dead body and its story that no one really heard until it, too, stopped breathing.  behavioral psychology major, couldn't make the fees, past extensions, plus the depression, the family poor, the government to blame, not enough education subsidy, the officials say the uni is not to blame, nor the policies, the students want someone, anyone, they walk out from their classrooms today

but they will be back tomorrow.  and after she's buried, news will be new.  as expected.  the dailies roll.  and every one carries on. 

another variation of The Story

Another Variation of The Story as Seen from
The Scene of A Poetry Reading  




the man, after having a stroke
of genius, takes his seat 
among the crowd.  his wife
beside him attempts to cover
the length of his left arm
because it had freed itself and
acquired volition.  she made it
keep still.  like a child 
who obeys only with a look.  

at last, the man is called. 
his turn to read his work
because he's been around 
the circuit long enough, and
the young writers, still
trying out the ropes, wanted
someone distinguished.  he
begins by saying how,
these days,

he's much pushed around 
on his wheelchair.  how he has 
become so courteous 
he brings his own chair on invitations.
the crowd laughs, carefully,
at his own careful joke.  he continues
saying he is forty-three and
has had many firsts
he has forgotten. 

anyway, he says, the firsts
are not important.
i'd rather the second
being in itself an affirmation
of the first.  and he carries on
long after the first hour.
the crowd understands, 
claps at cues
to later turn polite.

the wife knows.
the man doesn't.
and his freed arm
slithers off from the cover.  
and without his knowing,
moves
shuddering, slithering
closer and closer 
to the closest woman still. 




C. Carreon













 

banana blossoms

On the way to the grocery and back this morning, the names of summer roll in scents and colors.  Banana blossoms and laurel leaves.  Star anise and sun-dried mushrooms.  The  bright red watermelons and orange cantaloupes, more melons, mangosteens and star apples,  jackfruits, the beautiful warm yellows of mangoes and varieties after varieties of bananas.  Pineapples.  Coconuts.  Along a street, bougainvilleas and hibiscus, and  bushes of wild berries in bloom. 

self-introduction

introduce yourself in a bottle, the email instructed.  no more than two paragraphs please.  de-tail all the titles and dates, of your publications.  include the categories of your prizes, and recognitions. 

is it possible--the appeal--to keep out the public?

the email attempts at understanding.  gives a day.  it knows:  you will yield to (the impossible).  because you had previously taken hermit months, weather permitting and stars aligning, to say how the lines had been cut in the now that previous work.  how the narratives of breathing silences were decided.

fill in the bottle between today and tomorrow.

easier to put pebbles from this morning's run.  or someone's lost coin found.  nobody is interested at navel gazing.

yes.  and please include a digital file of a recent photograph.  also say: how is this new predilection for the grocery list, and your claim to be a list of a list.  the public will be here-ing.

but this new--- the line a simultaneous foreground and background of space; the line as and as not the interstice;  the line as an illusion of division; the line as a strip of palimpsest; the line as both inclusion and exclusion; the line that both directs and misdirects, tells and does not tell, shows and withholds, implicit and explicit; the line that is a semicolon in between consciousness of the revealed and the hidden.  all these strangeness.  take for example, the comic book.

and the grocery list you mentioned.  the catalog and the catalogue.  you have today and tomorrow.  to fill in the bottle.  

a brief long note on lines

1.  Something happens in between the panels of a comic book.
      
2.  (was it Scott McCloud who said?)

3.   What happens in this negative space? 

4.  The interstice, no matter how brief, saying without saying 

5.  Something has been omitted in favor for another

6.  Or.  It is all a matter of "seeing".

7.  Who sees?  

8.  Who chooses what to see?

9.  Drop a panel, and the whole story changes.

10.  A matter of version/s, 

11.  Of course:

12.  What is not told is as much as what is told

13.  Perhaps even more.

14.  (Louise Glück said:)

15.  It is the remnant, the incomplete

16.  That calls the power of the Whole.

17.  How I am drawn to poetry because of this:

18.  Words are

19.  A mere thin trace of a thought.

20.  A verse line is like 

21.  A visual line

21.  And the "line" of space in the middle of a panel

22.  All of them operating in 

23.  The context

23.  Of silence

24.  Speaking.

a temple of dragons

The red temple of dragons sits atop the city.  Above the known residences of the elite overlooking the city that sprawls itself like a net for all the working middle; that spreads itself thinner as it goes farther from the Uptown and closer to where the port-less edges.

T, though no longer as militant, and I couldn't help "reading" the landscape while climbing up the red stairways of the red-pillared temple:  how myths were, or have become, religion; how a culture is strong and vulnerable, how art is, how economy is.  No lengthy discussions; only many fragmented ideas.  Some photographs.  We tried de-constructing the temple:  turning it into the highest temple of the folk Sky heavens:  Agyo's; or the dragons, turning real, the last protectors of the temple under siege.  We've had had more conversations on culture and the comic book (as cultural by-product) the past forty-eight hours.  

Inside the temple, a kowtow.  And the scent of incense.

For a moment, at high noon, at the foot of the stairs before leaving, T mentioned a word I took for dusk.  

We went to another temple, a coral-stone church; and then another of the most recent architecture, a hundred white walls like dominoes on top of a land that used to be sea; all in two hours. Then it was time to send off T to the airport, to the parallel universe I once had been.

Along the way, watching from the window the road edge curves and the stiff street light posts, I realized I liked lines.  Literal, visual, two-dimensional lines: the way they are drawn against a backdrop of negative space.  "Espasyo," T said.  

The sky was so clear, it was white and cloudless.  Marching the beginning of summer.


On my way home, the dusk in the city was a gradation of the lightest  yellow, to cyan, to a sober dark blue.  No tinge of red.  A waxing moon was rising, thin and white like a clipped nail.   

Things of Light

Lately I’ve been remembering things
Of light: Sundry shining things:
Coins, pebbles, marbles in a glass,
Fleeting glimpses of mottled mornings
Of floorboards newly waxed,
April shower dripping on a poinsettia path,
Shafts piercing a maculate afternoon of acacias.

Clouds roil and rain stains the parchment
Sky of a dry season (thunder rolls
Across the horizon), but the glinting discs
Of lightning long remain in my recall—
The moment glancing on the well-worn
Edges of my window sill—still chasing me
In my smog-blurred somnambulant noons.



Marne Kilates

a women's month celebration

Last night, a celebration of "the woman" whoever she is or may turn out to be.  Every one did their bit of praise:  for the mother, the lover, the daughter...all of these faceless.  All, generic tags on the body.  One patron introduced her piece saying how, when she was young, she had always engaged in a battle of the sexes: the women better than men.  How the poem she was about to read was her epiphany:  proudly she read Hugo's "The Man and the Woman".  A long reading (but she was an art patron, excited in her own participation; and so she was let be) I suffered hearing.  A Catholic priest (also a patron) elevated a self-less old maid all alone on her deathbed.  Nobody said anything about cruelty.  

I would have wanted to do something on the body.  Strip it.  And make it talk about desire.  Make it say the things before it had taught itself self-censorship. 

But I couldn't, having had no idea the celebration was going to be that way.  Instead, I was there: a comic-tragedy.  

image from The Pillow Book

Eve, the garden, the bush, and the snake

Before the year ends, the project will have been completed and the marsh, reclaimed.  Funny that word, "reclaimed"; as if someone had previously taken the land and turned it into watery nests.  How I would have liked to ask where did the previous inhabitants go, now that the humans have "reclaimed" the land.  The frogs, the crickets, the snakes, among others.  Around the same time last year, I found a snake close to the window, looking in.  It was light green, no thicker than my finger, and had climbed its way up the bush.  Displaced, did it want to come in?

Some nights ago, a cricket found its way in the bedroom.  I let it go. 

The snake, a man killed it with a stone and placed its body in an empty liquor bottle.  Like a prize.  He later showed it off to anyone who cared to look.

One friend, he lives alone with a tely, his father's urn, and a gecko.  He said:  one night, the gecko was nowhere to be found; and the house felt deserted.

I told him there is The Book of Chameleons by Jose Eduardo Agualusa, where there is just a man like him; and a gecko living with the man.  And the gecko, in its previous life, was Jorge Luis Borges, the author my friend most admire. 

The road work for this project is nearly done.  A number of men already doing the road humps and the yellow and black stripes.  If one doesn't care to look, it is easy to mistake this place was never once a marsh.   

Instead of cutting the bush by the window, I let it grow.  And in spite of what might be better ideas, I let open all the house windows.  Sometimes, in the wee hours of early morning, I come downstairs and wonder what would I do: when I open the door and see a snake lying, waiting for me.








  

time keeping

 there is a kind of peace in running and in being with one's dog.  in spite of all the humidity one tries but cannot avoid.  and later, in the high of noon when every thing is so bright it hurts the eyes.  and every thing else is lazy, and balmy, and not wanting to move.  good to sit on the couch by the window with a glass of water.

(and come friday, a performance for women's month.)


(come saturday, the beginning of the graduate school trimester.)

(tuesday, T to fly over and talk about graphic illustration.)
     

but in the mean time, here.  zagajewski in his so many things breathing in between the said.  the consciousness and the sense of present-ness a construction from memory.  lewyka, the comic(?) banality of the tangible  where "[c]urls of apple peel slide off the table on to the carpet, where they are trodden into a fragrant mush." 

language and migration

Regarding language and migration, I never forget the questions that are often neglected when progress is abstractly celebrated, the questions that the real suffering human subjects face, one by one by one. Do you come from a place that is poor, that is not fully incorporated into modernity, that does not control a language that commands respect? Do you inhabit a language that does not have armies behind it and bombs and modems and technology? Do you reside in a language that will one day be extinct or whose existence does not have value in the marketplace and can’t even get you a good job and help you in the everyday struggle to survive? Do you dwell in a language that is wonderful only for making love or teaching your children the difference between right and wrong or serves to pray to God? Is your language perfumed with unpronounceable words by poets with unpronounceable names describing their unpronounceable forests and guttural maidens? How does such a language defend itself against the globalizing world?

                      —Ariel Dorfman, Chilean expatriate, novelist, poet, and distinguished professor at Duke University

 

 

After years of abandon and neglect, I am returning to the language of my mother.  In almost the same way that I have come back, after so many years of being away, to the same island to build my house.  Every thing is as strange as it is familiar.  Perhaps, it is the blood that really knows and always remembers.  Never mind if, when the unpronounceable is heard, I ask for its translation.  I want to know.  It shall not be unpronounceable again.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

such humid afternoon

1.  the dogs will have to bath

2.  the grass need to be cut

3.  Marina Lewycka's A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian on the couch by the window

4.  feet propped up

5.  this morning, saw a hawk flying low

6.  it's the time of the year to fly kites 

7.  thinking of windfall mangoes

8.  and how

9.  there is just enough breeze through the window