i started a joke

I should be a little too old for this.
But

in the mornings I still have my tea,
the toast, slices of a piece or two
of fruit

as though nothing has changed.
The weather 
has been kind of late, two days now.

It tells me to come for a run or what
may resemble like it.
I try not to think of a woman 

filling my recent days, with whom
words are exchanged
like gifts.

To each other as though we are young
again, somehow. In a way.
I am a little too old and she is 

a little older than I am; but also, 
married. Isn't it quite an old joke?

Love

On better days it is easy to remember
as though never forget
                       love
a clear thing
like the awareness of a lovely day
like this
without that cat across the street
                       black and passing

(the things constant) a long goodbye 8

It must be primordial knowledge of this 
Temporal state of being in body, this
Limited form, blood and flesh mere
Vessel of what we truly are--and what are we
(If what is such a definitive, limiting thing)?

Do we hunger, search for constant
Knowing we are fleeting mist?

I tell you I find comfort in the familiar.
Not one who easily warms to change, no matter
All these awareness of primordial states
And all the assurances of all being well

If not now, not yet, 
Later will.

The universe cannot be not good.
For all these wonders to exist. Tangible and
Not. Such as this bridge we cross, vague,
To meet you and I nearly formless in space
Years now, and I hope, years more.

Not to go gentle into the night

It cannot be trust, if it is not trust
Isn't it?
Not love, if not love

Things that can only be absolute are
Too large
For lives with threaded seams

Do weeds in a landscaped yard know
Their fate, just the same
They soak up sun and rain

Of course we know sweetness cannot 
Be had for long
But what is life for, if not for it?

After Chai's Photo

There is a photo of you eyes closed, on grass.
Neatly labeled "five minutes of sun."

The patch of grass could be anywhere
Here at the front yard, or back

Five yards or a kilometre away.
Sometimes it ceases to matter.

Sometimes does.  The photo is tagged
Oslo, Norway.  A world apart, also

Forgetfulness and consciousness away.
Your cat-lover friend who takes the photo

Hides behind the lens and bites
Into an apple.  And does not say.

obligation

the obligation is always compassion.
years and many things else have taught
scales and angles change
relative to the perceiving eye.
what matters little to one, matters
a world to another.  who is really to know

the lesser or more than of things:
we need to believe someone must
if only to keep the collective world
aright.  or is it
only our too often unarticulated need 
for the sense of anchoring ground?

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.  
 

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. 

there is a street

i ask her to read a piece of the new work, the work about a city, re-imagined, not appearing the way it is, appearing translucent, unreal.  she is a local, in many ways, i am not.  i think i see the city only now, even though, have seen it many times in dreams, in re-imaginings.  there are many things i have missed, many things not known.  she used to take me to the streets and show the alleys, the secret corners of Chinese men and herb women, among others.  streets for textiles only, streets for glass, streets for cutflowers, streets for these, and streets for that.  streets for motor bolts, for rubber slippers, for half starving children, for pet fish, for castoff rags, for fiber ropes, for stolen goods, for dogs, for women, for fruits, including the seasonal.  also including the dark and darker stories i can only imagine under the naked bright noon.  she had spent fragments of childhood in these streets, their eccentricities.  i had spent hours with her, held by hand lest i get lost.  the streets, the entire city, always a novelty.  i ask her to read a piece of the new work, the work about a city, re-imagined, not appearing the way it is, appearing translucent.  this is unreal, she says on the piece about the infamous red light street.  i ask why: is it because you want realism?  she cannot make up her mind. 

half a morning

away from the calendar, it is easier to pretend an endlessness.  an easy-ness of being.  this morning, i cut the flowers growing from the basil.  the flowers were beautiful, but the basil will die if they are let be.  i talk to the dogs who have the gift of contentment.  they are lucky.  yesterday, there were strays at the streets and i thought, someday i shall be a fosterer.  not now, not yet, when still preoccupied with the many things that speed time.  who ever said life is a race, and we are all racehorses?

at the conference, someone cried semi-feudalism and nearly raised a fist.  it started with the talk of horse-rig system.  an old way that lingered, half-dead, into the present.  and the word she cried so confrontational.  the large room was quiet.  no one said a word.  not everybody agreed.  i thought, why worry about men?  worry about the horse.  who cannot say a word.  who cannot have a god.

this country has a history of gods.  It is standing on a huge island of a God.  everyone prays.  too many claims.

Jayvee asked me to write something to close his exhibit on transcendence.  a one-man show of 3x4 paintings of acrylic and mixed media.  layerings of washes and drips, transparency in monochromatic whites, blues, grays.  non-figurative sense of the form.  i finished this morning, while the sky is in September downcast.  the news earlier was urgent about war and a mass burial.  i also wrote Jayvee a poem.  not one of us mentioned a god.













  

design

"Art as life is design," I recall saying, "an appearance
of random.  Even though it is not."  
What would I have thought if I were across the room,
thinking of the pieces of today:
a conversation on diplomacy, a paper stack,
a calendar with running days, an unanswered letter.

























  

on relative "reality"

if one holds a cup here, now, long enough, one sees how the cup dissolves into something else, how the here, the now, turns into a something a somewhere else between spaces and places and things.  a kind of non sequitur.  how do we resolve the fluid contradition that is also known as real?  perhaps the surrealists have it right:  how we live separately and simultaneously in liquid dreams and reals; two or more mirrors facing each other creating more worlds; the strangeness of being one same person and different to different persons.  

such nuances; such fine, fine thread; such attempt--no matter how inevitably futile-- to climb the height of the ladder in attempt to see the worlds.
























    

to believe again

the exact moment of your coming of age, do you remember? the moment when 
the rosy scales from your eyes fell
and your heart grew a stone
and you finally see

the world is not what you once thought it to be?



                                                                   --on reading college freshmen essays

a piece of thought in motion

in the middle of writing a post on the concept of line as ****, IT dawned: the ground concept on which to build the reading on ***.  for some months now, the enthusiasm to write about this series has been hibernating; but, until now, there was no particular seed with which to germinate the entire articulation.  also, there were, and still are, too many things on the calendar.  too many projects and legwork necessary.  the near-unbelievable paperwork and the meetings and post-conferences, including the working-dinners over which the more important and sensitive matters are discussed while couched in the trivial act of eating.  i want to mention this concept of the line right now (such is my excitement), but one must not get ahead of things.  i am looking at the clock---as i have the habit of removing my wristwatch, like keeping the phone away, when i intend to have a "breather"---and it says two hours before the need to leave for work.  today, as wednesdays should've been, would have been a writing day; except, for weeks now there has been no writing days.  for instance, two meetings are scheduled this afternoon...i wish to write again through hours that seem to stretch the day and the sunlight; but it is difficult to sit down and keep still to call the thoughts into form, into a piece of infinity entry, in the middle of a deluge.  
 

under a tree

to understand is to stand under
stand under a canopy
of something

loose change

have begun working on the floor.  barefeet.  laptop on a portable table knee-high, legs that can be folded.  

the lampshade appears like an afterglow from this angle.

w* sits beside me, is currently engrossed at the house lizard.

j--'s one-man exhibit is open for a month.  last saturday, thought of writing an essay on his recent works:  abstract, several washes, cloudy effect, beautiful texture, balance, zen, transcendence.

bought a painting yesterday.

the other day, lost my temper.

a couple of meetings tomorrow afternoon.


how these july days burn the skin like summer.

must remember not to forget the affidavits.

dawn these days chanting from the mosque can be heard.  ramadan.
 
still wonder at women and their dysmenorrhea.

come, next-weekend.  a roundtrip flight, a ballet show, a birthday gift for a date.

also planning a trip south at the coves.  still to calendar. 

some days, too often these days, feel old.  hard thai massage, replete with all the stretching, didn't help.  

note for this week: haircut.












   

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?






















 

not talking about politics

the politics in this country has come to such we decide not to talk about it.  a conversation best left unsaid.  we both know the condition of the roads and there is no one and everyone to blame.  now the elections are over, the tellies are beginning to show other things of interest; though a nationwide comedian still banters and makes satire in his primetime show.  you like this, of course.  and basketball, too.  in this country of basketball seasons and soap opera series.  a lost child always seeking to reunite with the lost parent, or the other way around.  in the meantime, the drama.  a masochist nation's form of entertainment.  little wonder the state of the nation.  these, among others, we agree not to disagree.  

nights, i walk with the dogs and watch the halved melon moon.   you call from the doorstep.  we share the couch in the dimmed living room.  i play jazz.  and in bed you tell me i am a stranger without roots.

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. 

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