how we sometimes drift into existence

sometimes the ending is not the worst in the read.  
after the exhaustion of several hundred pages, 
it becomes a temporal relief.  

to close the covers of a book 
and lay the pages to rest.  

of course we know, 
the characters remain.  alive in our minds.  
they, having moved on,  residing in our lives.







                         

                             
                  
                                                             shane, 25 june 2013

how we move forward

In "Another Country", the son of an exile grows up in a country not of his father's.  His father constantly dreams of coming home, to a place that before long only he and his generation know.  But the son does not know this, and mistakes the place for a place, a mass of land, a point in geography.  The son travels and discovers for himself what alienation is.  How it is to belong to a Some Place without a name, to search for it where even cartographers do not know where.

But home is where the heart is, someone says.
Home is where one is most secured, another pipes in.

What do they know of homes that are not what they are supposed to be.  And what do they know of life's constant irony: to search for that which cannot be found; to leave places that refuse to be left behind; to flee only to return again.

The country of our forefathers, the country of women, the country of childhood, bittersweetness, trauma, nostalgia.

The day we met, the city was in pain, begins the story.

How we leave places.  And how, no matter we leave, the places do not leave us.


















 

one night in June

one night in june, the moon rose full, a large yellow melon from the edge of sea.
it was as closest as it could get to the land, where its lover waits
gazing at it night after night as only one who dreams 
and loves from afar can.

bookends of a weekday

you come home at the end of the day
to a welcome by dogs like children

in a way that you will 
almost forget the dark of morning

waking at 4 am to the crisp outdoors
with their own halfdreams

and the race to leave this little island
for the bustling city two bridges away

through the glass windows you see
the silvering skyline

the graying strait
the coming tide



            



                                         shane, 23 june 2013









 

a good book

read illustrated shakespeare at almost the same breath as the comics.  snippets of greek mythology like fairy tales too.  they are among the many in the house of shelves.  many books has since followed long after the bobbsey twins and the hardy boys, and nancy drew who must be pretty but who never seems to grow old (the give away: how many cases could be had in a year?).  including what was once mistaken as must-be porn: the only forbidden books in the house.  these about men and women who arch their backs in throes (what are throes? and throes of passion? and what does this mean: to hold, to tighten, to gasp, to thrust?) 


to read 

is to suddenly have no body, no couch, no bed, no room

only mind, wandering, not lost, in somewhere they call clouds

where there is an old man, a big fish, and the sea.  a boy, a whitewash, a picket fence.  a tale, a revolution, a beheading of nobles, and two cities.  an escaped convict, and a guard.  a white fang.  a mockingbird, a house of the seven gables, a family stranded in an island, a man alone in an island, a story of a man who became buddha, and a man who became the greatest salesman in the world.

since then a longer string of names met while being without body.  names of people with birthdates and graves and histories of the real.

and in between, books of poetry.

to read

is to suddenly have no body, no couch, no bed, no room

only mind, wandering, not lost, in somewhere they call clouds.
 
and what did you get after all this reading? they ask, they who did not know
the art of disappearing.

what is in poetry

what is in poetry that drives us deep into the heart of an unknown, ourselves, hearing only the near indistinguishable, but familiar, echoes of our being?






















 

The Place of Existence

Hunching over sand and writing
using bare toes the name I call myself,

the rising tide came
the wave softly kissing shore 

and erasing three letters of me,
leaving only two, with the sound

of hush to remind of silence.
And perhaps, too, of loss--

the sand a slate clear and white--
memory taken for ocean's safekeeping.

On a rock by the shore
another name carved

by a child who thought 
of living forever

declaring he was here
this same spot where I now stand.





                                                 shane, 19 june 2013






 

selves as containers

there was a time when things were so very bad and it was a long time ago in a different life not this but of another no matter it may appear our existence is in a chronological order and that life was first and this second and this version only possible because of how that first was turned into something else and brought out into the open air for sun for breath and those that remain insoluble are kept stored in airtight glass containers and kept in cupboards or closets or hidden under old unused linens to be forgotten.

nobody talks about the time and the glass containers no matter their details have fused themselves as stalagmites and stalactites into the limestone caves of our minds where we keep a guard the small but wary version of ourselves who makes certain the door is locked to keep underground water from following its way following the indelible map that breathes in the dark having been accustomed in the dark that leads into the gap into the time when things were so very bad they remain dregs in our sleep

they call and make us walk in their wakefullness in our sleep the perpetually abandoned us haunting our own adult selves who have become amnesiac and selective and brave and afraid

yes there are so many things so many stories of times when things were so very bad it takes All of Silence to keep our dam selves whole.


                                                  
                                                                                                    of Mamala and women who live among people












                                                                  

where to be

There has been talk these days of retirement and retiring.  As if one has, inevitably, arrived at the one place, or time, meant for waiting in whatever way we may so choose to wait.

Ralph, he says, "in my dotage", and dotage is the word he did use, "I will stay here in B*."  We are in a cab, familiars and visitors of B*.  I look through the cab's rain pelted windows, to what I imagine as mountain folds hidden in the fog.  The world outside is wet.

We pass by a park and I'm randomly reminded of firewood, fire trees, and fireplaces; and the persistent mist that covers the windows, the drafts that let themselves in in rooms.  Early mornings at the hotel, I stay in the sunroom.  

I tell Ralph what would he do in such cold a place.  Will he be writing?  Be with a new, younger lover?

I say I write better too in a cold place, preferably with rain.

But I do not say I'd like to stay close to sea.  No matter how much I love keeping hands on a garden; maybe, no matter even that I'd want to tend bonsais the way my mother used to do when I was so very small I can hardly remember.  Teach a potted old tree to bear flowers, or to bend an arm like this to catch the sun this way.

We arrive at the fellowship dinner place early.  Jay, still quite unstable after the afternoon vodka, and I decide to take a walk.  B* is a beautiful place.  I wish I had a cigarette.  We talk about politics.  And B*.  And retiring.

Maybe not here, Jay says, I'd like to see fields after fields of sugarcane when I wake up in the morning.

I laugh and say "You sure take after ---*." 

He shrugs, still looking pink because of vodka.

My own literary parents are retired.  When I visited M* she showed me her garden of herbs and gave me turmeric and local varieties of basil.  J* too wants to farm:  Like my father before me, he said.

What I'd want to do in my last waiting days is to always see the moon, rise gold, rise silver, rise quiet.  And maybe instead of running with dogs, I will be paddling a boat out to sea.














 





     

there have been many poems about mermaids

I heard mermaids are found this way.

She who is not always near the shore

or in between abandoned mastless ships

sails torn or anchors lost.  She who is

said to be sometimes found in cities

taking the beautiful in pictures, as if

wanting to find and place the missing. 
  
                                                 C. Carreon, Through a camera lucida





Already there are many poems about mermaids, even though these are by far less than the stories about them already told.  Told by way of caution, disbelief, or awe.

If one stares at open sea long enough, they are easy to believe: creatures that resemble like you and me, though freer, under the sea; 

but only maybe 

because it could be a tail or fin of any:

sealion, snake, whale, shark.


 

what is the Golden Fleece?

The lost
The seeking
Argonaut


At the end of each day's hours, in a world's corner where we retreat  to hide at our most vulnerable time, at that most peculiar instance of only a few breath spaces long between waking and sleeping, 

We do sometimes remember.  
And see this strange world as it is: 

A large labyrinth city where we, the argonauts, seeking the fleece, have gone lost, 

Trapped in between sky high walls
working hours
job descriptions
streets, society, and survival.

Perhaps, the minotaur is no beast, no Other, 

But Us,

Who, having lived longer 
 

And longer in this maze 
have turned into 
memory-less beasts.


Where is the skein of thread?
Where is Ariadne?
Where is the Fleece?

in an unnamed city

should we happen to meet in a city unnamed such as this, and happen to recognize each other, even without the sound of voice, or the familiar outline of bones, i'd wish to take a walk with you, out into the streets, no matter the rain, slight or drizzle, the wet pavements with a few puddles, and pine trees, lampposts that may start their light even before the dusk or dark. in some places, we know, the sun sets purple, if it sets at all; in some cities, red.  sometimes, orange.  but in this place, darker and darker hues, of blue, sometimes, also, slate grey.  meeting, we probably will not talk a lot  although we would walk side by side quite comfortably as friends, and, also, as strangers.  and it'll be good, i think, because both of us will be looking at all the unsaid in this place's rainsoaked cosmos, all companionable silence and wondering brimming with poetry. 

the little dog sits among the flowers

one day in a series of long weekdays, you get a day-off.
the one day in the week you promise yourself:  i will
sit by the window and write today.  sometimes it happens.
half the time, you are needed to do or to be something else.

you are partly obsessed with trying to keep the same
semblance of order in the house, although
you concede defeat to the dust motes.  your dogs, too,
are patient with you.  and all the books that find themselves

in the unexpected places and wheres in the house: 
all of them  in the middle of being read even though
there are no bookmarks for those who'd want
to pick them up from their innumerable places.

if you visit the bookstore today, the one with a blue door,
and a chime behind the glass, 
you'd come out with a brown paper bag again.
if you decide to stop by a coffee shop, 

all of the pages will be read--if they don't have wifi.
in which case, is near impossible.  unless.
you deliberately leave your phone
and everything else except the moneybills.

and by the glass window at the cafe, 
beside a glass of water and a mug of exoticized coffee,
you watch someone else's little dog
sit among the flowers

this beautiful day at peace.  
and you begin leafing through a page.














 

on possibly being lost in the city

it begins as an invitation, the city.  waving at you from across the narrow strait where there runs a ferry twice daily.  from across the steel blue bridge, visible for a few more miles because everywhere else around is as flat as the island.  all the mountains are across.  all the terrains, including the bowl of clouds where trees and streets play corners.  the city a bit hazy at the mountains' feet.  a bit teasing.  a bit farther from easy reach.  a bit closer than you can possibly imagine.  also, a bit safe from the humdrum, from the saltiness of sea breeze, from the roads that are still in states of ongoing construction.  from the humidity of it all.  

if you heed what begins as an invitation, the city becomes.  what it turns into, the moment you cross the strait, narrow despite the ferries, in spite of the stillness of the steel bridge, and all its promises of clear visibility.  it is not really: by the mountains' favored feet.  not really in a terrain you've known; not really.  not inside a bowl of cumulus clouds, not anywhere near.  not hazy, no longer teasing now that it is no longer waving at you from across.  it has turned itself into:

a labyrinth

of streets, of walls, of people lost walking and working.  where exit doors are farther and farther from easy reach.  only as close as you can imagine.

you hear:  a false fire alarm, a few laughter from a building; and the you in your mind begins to dream of the saltiness of the sea breeze and all the roads you once knew that were in perpetual states of ongoing construction.

two lists in this season of rain

things to do in this season of rain:

1.  graduate school final paperwork and grades
2.  first draft of proofs
3.  two new programs
4.  a paper
5.  a second collection 
6.  (project that has been sitting in my head for a year now: need to kick myself) 
7.  mind the front yard grass


 things to be happy about in this season of rain:

1.  graduate school final paperwork and grades
2.  first draft of proofs
3.  two new programs
4.  a paper
5.  a second collection
6.  (a project that has been sitting in my head for a year now:  to kick myself)
7.  the front yard grass
























 

two parcels

the first parcel had been, supposedly, received 11 months ago.  documents processed for at least two days, an airplane ride away.  i was promised delivery by courier, and waited, patiently, through 11 months.  no reply.  called long distance etc.  meanwhile, the office went ahead with things and so it appeared the parcel had been received.  until i personally checked to make sure.  there was nothing.  retraced steps personally:  airplane, inquiries.  yes, the parcel was sent.  the young lady searched the files:  in a packed drawer in a steel cabinet, in a pile of brown folders on a table, etc.  she produced a trace in a card:  yes, it was sent months ago.  she typed the code and printed electronic proof:  yes, the computer does not lie.  the parcel had been sent, and received (supposedly) 11 months ago.  the electronic trace gave a name.  i called the name.  hi, do you remember receiving the parcel on this date?  the name denied.  no, i did not receive anything.  less than an inch away from literally saying are you accusing me?  i ran my fingers through my hair.  there was no use arguing or pushing when the next words wouldn't be good at all.  okay, i tell myself, what would be the point of arguing and the prize of winning it?  the documents are still lost.  lost in the jungle of the name's working place.  sigh: to retrace the steps, to book another flight, to process the documents again.

the second parcel was received yesterday.  Gloria, who must be feeling partly responsible for the lost documents, was excited: she sent me sms and walked with me the moment i arrived at the office.  your documents have arrived! she said.  the odds are.  one look at the sender and.
the second parcel was expected: i was informed i was to receive it within the week.  still, it is a happy thing.  the second parcel of papers.  with all the copyediting marks of the hardworking copyeditor who must've wondered why there were too many absent punctuations.  why subheadings and titles are in small letters.  i will have to begin writing stet after stet after stet.  the note enclosed in the parcel said a cover artist has been assigned and i sent email that i've asked someone to do it.  that she is in muscat/masqat, oman may need to be discussed.  in the meantime, let's see what can be done.




















 

morning walk

on gray mornings like this, i remember some place else.  although remembering could mean a whole different, whole new thing.  not the kind that re-collects the past, and assembling it into some kind of fiction in the prose of thinking.

in some other place, it is also gray like this.  maybe also in the middle of june, or the beginning.  and there is always the promise of rain.  maybe there is also a cool breeze, the kind that partly bites and i am wearing a sweater, the reversible kind.

when it is gray and quiet like this, i imagine walking to a place somewhere else.  the time would stretch into a stillness, the sun would never rise.  keeping low like this, behind the clouds that are gray.

there will a few trucks on the road and their cargoes heading to destinations far.  still, a number of cars, glassed, just as isolated.  there are a few wet leaves on the road, a few branches that had fallen.  and if paid closest attention to, a hint of salt in the breeze. 

i imagine remembering a dock at the far end of the road.  and a bar where one could order a hard drink.  there, there are no mornings, just dusk.  and the at windows, a skywide picture of an eternal sunrise or sunset.

come in, june

"All grown-ups were once children...but only few of them remember it."
                                                                      Antoine de Saint Exuperry




Come, love, come.  already it is june and the rains have arrived.  the mornings are gray when we wake and they are promising.  more than dew, more than mist, more than.  sunlight is more golden this way, more precious.  we open the windows and part the curtains and the dogs, they try, to find their way in the gray light.  i have come home with a bag of mountain tea, you take a kettle and fill it with water, you put in the leaves.  you take a drink.  and marvel at its smoothness.  the memories of the mountains in the scent.  i have come home with a bag of sunflower seeds.  you open your palms and i pour.  the way sunflower springs in a june of some other time.  meanwhile, it rains, and i take your hand.  Come outside, love, come outside and play.  it is only rainwater and puddles, and here, let me make you a paper boat to sail and travel with me.

if we wonder what is real

there is always this brief period of grace.
take a seat, on the usual chair
on the usual position 
at the usual angle

                     from the sunlight
                     from the breeze
                     from the window
                     from the door

                                     and one can almost make believe
                                     one hadn't left at all.