crossing boundaries

Have you seen the movie "Interstellar"?
A meeting of metaphysics and science.
Also, an explanation on love being

What can transcend time and space.
Is beyond it.
Is through it. A fifth dimension.

Such a very large word, love.
Our idea of it an ambitious claim.
Also, foolish. And brave.

Let me make the claim anyway.
Entire sense and experience into 
This one convoluted word.

Not only an idea, but also this 
state of waking, sleeping, dreaming.

Rodovia

Portia passed away yesterday. Word reached me late, 
translating itself from Portuguese to English, 
from the last photo I saw of her (Atlanta, smiling 
beside another colleague on sabbatical leave)
to the photo found after having made my way across

morning coffee, rain (another storm is coming
to these islands), and jazz.
On the news, only a broken motorcycle on highway
only a trace, previous presence. No Portia.

Had I been at the office yesterday I would have had
company to share loss with: this kind 
of irreplaceable space occupied by her joy.
Her youthfulness at 67.

She would have had a temper for mentioning the number--
the only way to cause her age. But such a life! 
Of indefatigable joy.

from a hut overlooking part of the ocean

After all, we share a common journey.
When traveling together, it's normal to talk,
exchanging remarks, say, about the weather,
or about the stations flashing past.

We wouldn't run out of topics for so much connects us.
The same star keeps us in reach.
We cast shadows according to the same laws.
Both of us at least try to know something, each in our own way,
and in even in what we don't know there lies a resemblance.

Just ask and I will explain as best I can
what it is to see through eyes,
why my heart beats,
and how come my body is unrooted.

From Wislawa Symborzka, "The silence of plants" pp 76-77

The Grecian Urn

Finally, I turned off the TV 
getting up after sleeping through a rerun
an old series from more than a decade ago.
Two detectives--a man and a woman--in
futile search of truth. In the long run
of course it no longer mattered.
What once preoccupied the young.

Student activists who raised fists
against superstructures, convinced
to change the world by sheer willpower
and their term papers. Romantics,
the only kind who could not not believe in

love. W, who was asleep on the rug 
close to the couch, woke up and followed me
to the room. The day was over. 
I opened two windows to let in the night.
On the bedside table, close to the light
the still-unmarked end of term essays
remaining certain of tomorrow.

McKinley

1
What is in this country of struggle.

2
Y the German who, in the beginning
arrived merely to accompany the wife, 
now asks to stay another year. This.
This place no longer so terrible 
as once thought. There is a book

3 
Of poems in English & Spanish on my table.
A gift for them 
on their last Christmas here. This.

4
Why do we expect never to see each other again.

5
There is a Filipina who married a German.
And I want to try
to understand how they found each other
between two languages.
Y the German says are you leaving next year?

6
Yes.

7
Next year comes with many things
I try not to think when I come home at dusk,
when the dogs and I walk after dinner
and the night wind is crisp. 

8
So many to be left behind: such need pack light.
(She)
And the dogs (W the eldest, does she know
that these days when I pat her I say goodbye).
This, among others.

9
Dogs of this country cannot survive such cold.

10
Y the German says so very long. 
I do not continue the talk.
She and I barely talk 
of these things.
Y the German asks what about sex.

11
What is in this country of struggle.

12
Walking home dusks these days, 
I try to memorise the turmeric sky
and the shadow of a coconut tree. 
(And like a scene from a bad movie) I find myself
refusing to write.

because we'll never know the rest of the way

i wonder how it will be meeting you again
the world is not that large
it is small enough

chances are

we might come across each other again
i know i wouldn't know
what to make of it

chances are

you will appear indifferent exactly the way
versions of you did in
survival stories

something over

the many other lovers left in your wake
because i wasn't blind all along
because neither of us were blind

we knew all along, it was over
chances are

we knew all along, it would be over
chances are

we knew we wouldn't be over.

what comes in the end

what comes in the end after beer.
we talk about multi-modality
how so many different things mean
different on their own and different
when happening simultaneously.
the mind always attempts to mean.
platforms can change. so are worlds.
even though they essentially remain
the same. what comes in the end
after beer. i take the slow walk home. 
feeling the lightness of the new
walking boots she gave me. dark blue 
the colour of deep sea. and quiet.
some forms of serenity. a thought
came over talk asking is this the way
it feels before dying? ha ha ha.
about half a year left before leaving.
we did not toast. he is leaving too.
scotland. i name two states, where
the wind blows i go. the cosmos.
she remains to wait. i am already
thinking of coming home to her.
where really home is. we did not
toast. i come home walking slow
the sky is november too clear.
beautiful women so beautiful it hurts
the way one feels the loss of many
things. time and other lives.
this one now being what is had. 
my dogs call out from feet away
sensing my return. some loves
are perfect that way no matter
how unperfect the receiver.
what comes in the end after
beer. a sweet kind of sadness.
the kind also known as gratitude.

crossings

 

Comes the bird
touching water
shore of another 
same world.

where you and i are

Names can be deceiving.
A letter, when given to a room
Ceases the room to be.

What is a room?
Room that is in a house, that is in
A life, that is a space

To occupy as love would
Inhabit a time.
And loving, a state of habitation.

Where you and I are, shall we
Receive a name for it or forgoing
Let the where itself be.

I thought of a lover by another name 
In another way, is still a lover.
As love is afraid and brave

Certain of uncertain.

My Father's Birthday

My father's birthday yesterday, I remember but chose not to
Say anything, choosing to remember why not. 
The backstory is long, kept away in a partially closed room

Not far from where most people stay to admire the garden
Among others. Stoicism is plenty, so is civility.
Keeping surface clear, spotless from hostility as a glass table. 

My mother expected me to call. I am always never 
Too far from anything I chose. She must be upset now
Not replying to my message left like an after thought

Pretending forgetfulness. Of course, she knows and chose
Not to remember. My poor brave mother whose dreams 
Must have been as bright as she before bearing a child

So similar in many ways to the father who, too, must have been
As bright as any bright and dreaming young man before 
He succumbed to secret darknesses.

should i tell you there are two lemons on the table

Should I tell you there are two lemons on the table, the kind
grown in these regions. Taut and green and sour just enough
sweet to be forgiven. Not that they ask for any, being only
what they are. Unlike other things that need telling

For instance, the green ramekin with an apostle spoon 
beside a custom-made glass half filled with water the way
things should be. The mobile phone beside it, black
is quiet and the pen beside it, black, is still.

Other things need reminding. The clock to keep on running.
The ring around a finger, hers, to mean. The roads are long
and web-like and many. And this, a brief brush of wind.
She is passing and is leaving.

a close kind of distance

What must one feel seeing you, beautiful
the pictures that mean your life in blossom, by sea.
With you the dogs, sun, yukelele. 
You on bare feet singing with the wind
orange skirt catching orange skies.
What must one feel seeing you, beautiful
in love, in life, in blossom, by sea

when one must say nothing
must say nothing
must say nothing.

because a young artist wrote about and i remember you at dusk at sea with dogs

1
Young men leapt over bonfires
while beginning

2
                           artists pass naked for art.
                           There is a difference

3
in the quiet of solace
against empty.

4
I saw a vision of rain forest
green and leaves wet

5
                            falling back from heights
                            spent finally 
                           
6
on the sheets. You on top
head on my chest.

7
Young girls in this country dream snow
as in any other beginning

8
                            except perhaps when told
                            about such cold, such cold.

9
I spent time in quiet
un-counting moments

                            before the leaving. This warm
                            country of people, sun and storm.








                            
               

right across

gentle non-fiction

One type of genre I step back from is the personal essay. In spite of ideas such as fossilised written selves vis-à-vis transitory selves, the certainty and nuance of an elusive self migrating in space and time, the lies of protracted drama in the name of art, the unreliable "I", other beautiful and convincing arguments the many number of friends writing in the genre say, I remain a step away.

Non-fiction, no matter how gentle, how sincere, tells too much. A freshman's first draft of narrative essay tells how she was physically abused by a father, how she cried in the middle of a cornfield, thought of running away from home, decided to stay. Another draft of a Haiyan survivor's account.

Sometimes I pretend not to wrestle with the question why. 

No matter sometimes I feel something surfacing from the well of quiet to be written this way, in this genre of gentle sincerity. There, a lump in the throat. A remembering of something that is, perhaps, being slowly forgiven by the self within the self, in spite of the self.

And yet, I step away. Less courageous than a nine-year-old battered by her father at the cornfield.

some form of paradise

there are photos and memories and dreams
to keep close in pocket, in mind, in sleep
when one finally holds oneself 
grown and able, still
with fears no more
and no less than
a child's

photo by S. Kho Nervez

Never enough time

Never enough time to be a mother
Never enough time to be a father
Never enough time for a child
Who grows out of itself by tomorrow

The child will be gone
Replaced by a woman
Replaced by a man
Replaced by a stranger 
Come tomorrow

Never enough time to be wife
Never enough to be husband
To be lover 
To be child
To be constant
Come tomorrow

Come tomorrow
Come stranger

Who does not fear tomorrow?

life as lived

Posted a photo of the wild ones in the water--the loved dogs
in their eternal summer. The photo is all 
bright and light and shore and water
and too easy laughter,
it does not tell all.

after the party is better

After the party is better
at night when only empty glasses
remain crowding together
on tables being cleared

There, a few careless stains 
on tablecloths for what spilled
and broke of so much cheer

The band is done
all dancing, too, as guests 
gone
memory of a good night:

waiters making sounds
stacking plates etc. minutes.
They too, very soon gone.

How much conversation
is left, is to go on--is how much 
night we have left.

I think I will prefer now
after a brunch party

Still sunny, we still
can have rest of the day 
together yet. 
                  

                                     photo by A. Schneidt

shall we take a quiet walk together?

Love Like Salt

Love Like Salt



It lies in our hands in crystals
too intricate to decipher

It goes into the skillet
without being given a second thought

It spills on the floor so fine
we step all over it

We carry a pinch behind each eyeball

It breaks out on our foreheads

We store it inside our bodies
in secret wineskins

At supper, we pass it around the table
talking of holidays and the sea. 

by Lisel Mueller 

ride along with the universe

The entire day with rain. I remembered my colleague yesterday saying love the rain;
so I sent a video Singing in the Rain and remembered too late it is about love; and
didn't the colleague tell me in a question the wife was having an affair? The entire

day with rain. News in a long list came in, drenched, through the front door. A list of
too many unnamed: dead children washed ashore, refugees, the world a square.
S sent an email from Singapore, saying his non-fiction on Philippine boxers is done

also, how is my writing. Should I say the manuscript is done and now I hear nothing.
On its stead, I spend an entire day with rain solving math equations imaginary
problems with clear solutions--how about children caught in war and un-leaving?

There is a Simic upstairs: a child running with scissors. 
A new piece I need to write for a public reading for teenagers on the 13th. 
A party faring a dear friend well into retirement. 
The book review of a first compendium of local literature long overdue. 
A module to leave for when I leave. 
And places here I have yet to be in.
A yearlong farewell; till home again...

...sometimes I dream of empty. That sound of water, that wind, that sky... 

but until then, not yet, not yet

this, now, only

The marvel of seeing you

always the first time 

every moment, knowing

we will never again pass

this same way 

as the same persons again.

the gaze

all points in the room point at
the one thing
partially acknowledged and therefore 
there at the corner of my eye

jazz in the evening and quiet

Quiet of mind becomes not an easy find. Jazz helps
clear the air of thoughts always insistent of importance:
sublunary matters announce themselves loud banging
the door for importance.

no words

I hear no words recently, between my ears the room
all open windows no sunlight no moonlight stay
they come leaving as they please

In their steads, I play music slow with steps
the kind that sways the shoulders in hazy waves

Miracle Fair

Commonplace miracle:
that so many commonplace miracles happen.

An ordinary miracle:
in the dead of night
the barking of invisible dogs.

One miracle out of many:
a small, airy cloud
yet it can block a large and heavy moon.

Several miracles in one:
an alder tree reflected in the water,
and that it’s backwards left to right
and that it grows there, crown down
and never reaches the bottom,
even though the water is shallow.

An everyday miracle:
winds weak to moderate
turning gusty in storms.

First among equal miracles:
cows are cows.

Second to none:
just this orchard
from just that seed.

A miracle without a cape and top hat:
scattering white doves.

A miracle, for what else could you call it:
today the sun rose at three-fourteen
and will set at eight-o-one.

A miracle, less surprising than it should be:
even though the hand has fewer than six fingers,
it still has more than four.

A miracle, just take a look around:
the world is everywhere.

An additional miracle, as everything is additional:
the unthinkable
is thinkable.

[by Wislawa Szymborska; translated by Joanna Trzeciak]

length of a year

the logic is to measure as many things
                  to live the finite life, it's end
                      at the very end certainly known
                            even as certainly unseen.

the body feels it for us, receiving the Quiet. cell
                  by cell as if room by room, coming in
                       door after door in this poor temple 
                            of soul. the young do not hear

yet the Quiet's footsteps echoing in the wind.
                   but come years of footfall after footfall
                        one finally recognises the visitor 
                             has been in all along. the logic is

to measure as many things to forewarn life
                   the finiteness of every moment that needs
                       be lived. sense the silhouette passing
                             minute after minute quantifiable

ultimately by calendar. but how long the length of 
                   a passing year for uncertain waiting?
                       the letter gave no promises, only half
                            affirmative gesture, the word "about"

encompassing. so one continues to move the motor
                    of day-to-day, no certain number
                        except what wind presses on
                            one's cheek, what dogs in gentle

wisdom knows, the way they keep close. in the way
                    one's mind attempts to see an entire
                        year more, the whole turn around sun
                            from now, but sees only part of it.
                            
I rather not have yet the leaving a form, a body, a face 
                    as number of remaining days, of date, hour
                        of plane departure because it is inevitable.
                            I rather at this moment let it remain

a spectre she and I would let in in time, but not yet, 
                    not yet. at the moment, let it stay
                        a welcomed guest at the front door.