watching in the dark

It is Friday and it is raining and I do not want to begin 
a line about the weather, but the drops are heavy
the TV repeats news from last night about the forty-four 
dead young men, soldiers 
no older than any son in M'danao.  Mothers weep 
fathers trying to close as many doors as possible
from the inside, no country.  No one
understands deaths of young ones

of children, of dogs.  The neighbour who
padlocked his house and never returned for his 
Lab in a kennel all of us could hear baying silently
patient even in dying, thirst and hunger none of us could help. 

exiles

That one has to drive two hours from the City of Angels to see stars
we all laugh about it, it being close to impossible where we are now
seated in the middle of an island still to be overtaken by what has
already covered cities of our past lives, stardust, blankets, bog
no one really wants to talk plain about in words brave enough not to balk
from one's own forgiving the things underneath, unspoken, hidden.  
A circle of us who ran away, who got away, are sorry to have left but are
not coming back, are lost but not asking, are abandoning, are making.
Here, no need to drive anywhere to or walk away from but the moving
is constant anyway, from shadows real or of our own making.

taking a world on the shoulder

What we had was time and an excess of courage.
Immortals dreaming of endlessness
What to do with the beyond imaginable: True
Love and sunsets of halfway around the world.
Was it as clear as your toes underwater
Crystal sea on a blue tropical Sunday? What
To be.  How.
A little child squeals, the mother surprises with
Delights: look an ant on sand carrying a world on its shoulder
Look the endless tireless march to the beyond
All of them certain of tomorrow and afraid.
What happened between the dreaming and the coming
True?  Incremental losses
Of time and faith and courage: all necessary
All inevitable.
So that the mother looks at the child now and remembers
feeling the known unnameable.
     

do you have time for the movies?

the way we used to do when so much younger
the movies and always something else before and after
an entire saturday, an entire whole altogether
we park the car farthest in the lot, take time to
walk as slow as we could, turning twice and thrice
around the same block for conversations
that had much to do about nothing
touching voice than anything else.  as if we could
touch the other's soul with it.  snippets of stories
and faraway dreams about leaving and becoming

the shy kiss on the doorstep

do you still have time for the movies
the way we used to do when so much younger

sometimes bolder

after a number of drinks
and right before
a single bed

a conversation with
half-meant debate
about the matter

of it all: art
and change
to what

extents

can men go on 
and on ignoring
libido 

loneliness
and the liveable
change

Raymund wants to know

and asks us questions beginning with "I am curious"

to this circle of men necessarily no longer young
only pretending to be
half a world wiser, over not a few
drinks each to each.  One

advertiser, filmmaker, critique,
poet, painter, sculptor with
meanderings
well into the timelessness of a windy night

where a gecko listens to the wind
cold made warm with drinks
and conversation going round and round.
"I am curious" he begins

as the circle of men go on pretending
to know.  And later have 
a good temporal
laugh about it.

strongman

A conversation tonight and I know where this road is leading to
The route is nothing new, I've been here before
The details recognisable by heart

Who says it is easy to love
Only the young, the fool, the blind
I've stopped truly believing

The wisest thing to do
Believe she is not really staying
No matter what she says so

Who says it is easy to love
Only the young, the fool, the blind
She can always change her mind

A conversation tonight and I know where this road is leading to
The route is nothing new, I've been here before
No ring, no promise by heart

Can hold anything together, no centre can hold
One must know how to unopen some doors
How to keep at bay

Who believes in love
Who believes in change
Who believes in good

Who believes
Who believes
Who believes

I want to
I want to
If only I could

The Visit

after St. Francis and the Sow



Francis comes over to visit and there is none of the Spectacle
before and after him, mob frenzy in madness in dance parading
a black crowned man to his death, a dark child with burnt world 
on its hand.  The horde waits for him in patient hunger,
hollow ecstasy.  Father! Father! they call out to him.  

Father! Father!             From a distance

he touches them, oh he touches them
 as he once touched the sow.

I Got It Bad And That Ain't Good

some pleasures.

bamboo wind chime

It hangs now on the doorstep,
this bamboo wind chime with wind
making sounds of water.

It makes a different pottering 
from the rain taking its slow time
this morning.  There is enough

natural light for a day the colour
of clouded glass.  We do 
not take a walk.  We take

patience and leaves of paper 
rubble we call life.  Or the idea of it:
a meeting under a tree,

an afternoon tea, a conversation
like you and I have
all the time in the world.

a passing away before midnight

The first thing I did was to give her an instruction.  In a voice
collected, not unlike the last time I heard myself doing 
the same when an entire block was burning and she 
had refused to leave the room where we were, seated

hands on her lap, eyes there and not there saying the fire 
will burn itself away.  I heard myself say yes you are right

but let's anyway bring outside a few things like this see?

And so when it happened when the dog, after three hours 
nestling on my arms, gasped for air finally letting go itself
to become warm and limp on my lap, she broke crying 
and the first thing I did was keep still 

to keep myself, quietly closing a number of doors from 
feeling.  It was not yet time.  A bag, a phone call, 
an arrangement and a truck driven under the first of January stars

outside a few things like this see?