do you sail?

The past few weeks I have been thinking of rowing.
There are two rivers nearby, large 
at this time of the year. 
There is much need to release and attempt to draw 
out into a clear line what has been repeatedly said.

I have stopped taking walks and will have to resume.
I no longer have my dogs.
I sleep and dream and wake up as though 
I haven't slept at all.

St. Patrick's may be a day with a reason.
Maybe one day we will happen to meet, you whiskey 
on hand, me, on the rocks.
And because I do not believe in therapists, 
I wrestle with own shadows,

Fill up the to-do list and bed with heaviness.
Sometimes the day begins with a clear mind
which means nothing and I come down to make tea,
which means coming through a number of doors 
that entering or exiting becomes uncertain.

what the mind says

what the minds says/ is altogether different.

i take walks in the morning, walks

in the late afternoon towards evening, evening late

the lights becoming/ is altogether different.

i have to keep remembering now, nearly

all the time what made the decision to keep on 

this way beyond distances and times of day, past

the roads seen ahead/ what the mind says

is altogether different.

(the slow remaining days) a long goodbye 7

And how do women understand goodbye?
I do not know how to comfort
Someone who says she is alright. 
Do we not take one for one's word?
I tell her repeatedly I am leaving,
settle as many things as her buoys

She will have to learn to navigate
Absences, this beautiful woman 
Who reminds me of my own weaknesses.

Wiping the plate last night, she 
Suddenly cried. And we both know. 

It is very quiet now where I am. 
Morning sun gold after early rain.
The dogs are asleep. I am having tea.
This afternoon I will talk about 
Literature. And Times.

In the last moment of departures,
Like chess, unsentimental, I step.
And how do women understand goodbye?
Looking at the disappearing figure.

words do not die, one must remember the sunshine

Words do not die, one must remember the sunshine
what it was that used to feel 
the world is large enough for all the rooms 

of love. 
All the windows open, you kiss by the street
both twenty 

or something again. Words do not die, especially
unsaid what it was that used to feel
what was meant when she said 

to never call again. One must remember the sunshine.
Words do not die in another universe
someone has courage to dial the phone again.

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.

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

the needs we know and not know

So I have spoken with G* and I am to begin the papers
Today; it is much sooner than expected, but just so.
The half of the year next year a blank slate now for a time.
Even when the expected comes, it looms and the heart
Shivers knowing of no certainties. A number of places

At the tip of the tongue the cosmos to decide. It says
Five years. The leap of trust must we do.
Even for the uncertain, there is such a thing as faith.

Two Days Away

It is always possible to write 
about seemingly random things.
The way the mind a pastiche.

At the moment I think about where
are my glasses? The light is harsh.
Also, the motorcycle key.

The beach wonderful today. 
The humidity and heat in this country.
Yesterday I dropped by at Ozee's 

met the new woman, the fifth one 
I've known since meeting the Pole 
eight years ago. Who says 

the house is empty. At the moment
she is gone for a week; and not
one of us talks about the possibility.

Although sometimes she says
"before you leave." 

I am afraid, sometimes, to even think
about it: leaving or staying.
Although the two Germans are marking

each day that takes them closer,
fostered local dogs in tow, 
to finally returning home.

The ways we go

Two nights ago, I dreamed of pulling a tooth---
two, an incisor and a molar.  There would have been
third, but in the dream it stopped being loose---

and I woke up distraught.  Dreams of teeth

are not good in this country of dreamers, they mean
death.  I spent the rest of the hours watching
for light.  Morning, she tells me, 

death in the family, but it could also mean simply

change

exactly the way I was told the first time
a reader explained the cards before reading.
A transition, she had said, gesturing at a cup.

What do I know?  What do I know?

I called my mother in the dark of morning
she replied, pray.
In the corner I watch the stillness and the quiet

Who knows?  Who knows?

J-- had a stroke of luck right after our meeting, 
and passed away.  A woman with terminal cancer
brought her oxygen tank to listen to a poetry reading.

The Danish neighbour hit the truck at the freeway

the same day my new motorcycle arrived.
His wife and months-old child I had greeted just that morning,
and she had spoken kindly to the dogs.

Who knows?  Who knows?

There is an envelope upstairs waiting for the last paper.
There could be a leaving, but do I dare 
finally go?

from Flying Home

from Flying Home 

by Galway Kinnel


As this plane dragged
its track of used ozone half the world long
thrusts some four hundred of us
toward places where actual known people
live and may wait,
we diminish down in our seats,
disappeared into novels of lives clearer than ours,
and yet we do not forget for a moment
the life down there, the doorway each will soon enter:
where I will meet her again
and know her again,
dark radiance with, and then mostly without, the stars.

Very likely she has always understood
what I have slowly learned,
and which only now, after being away, almost as far away
as one can get on this globe, almost
as far as thoughts can carry - yet still in her presence,
still surrounded not so much by reminders of her
as by things she had already reminded me of,
shadows of her
cast forward and waiting - can I try to express:

that love is hard,
that while many good things are easy, true love is not,
because love is first of all a power,
its own power,
which continually must make its way forward, from night
into day, from transcending union always forward into difficult day.

And as the plane descends, it comes to me
in the space
where tears stream down across the stars,
tears fallen on the actual earth
where their shining is what we call spirit,
that once the lover
recognizes the other, knows for the first time
what is most to be valued in another,
from then on, love is very much like courage,
perhaps it is courage, and even
perhaps
only courage. Squashed
out of old selves, smearing the darkness
of expectation across experience, all of us little
thinkers it brings home having similar thoughts
of landing to the imponderable world,
the transoceanic airliner,
resting its huge weight down, comes in almost lightly,
to where
with sudden, tiny, white puffs and long, black, rubberish smears
all its tires know the home ground.

watching light on a pool of water

Morning finds me reminded of Rwanda
and senseless deaths
the news never runs out of
like fuel for the grand machinery 
of the world (what machinery?)
In a made-up place, quiet and serene
birds call and try find
ways on impersonal pavements
where bamboo is cultured to grow
and kindness a paid service.
Blue bowls of sky and water
meet in a dome.  
This make-believe peace.
Somewhere else a plane 
crashes and closed rooms are alive.
I wait for August, not admitting
anxiety for something brewing.

Last night was a waning moon
and two bottles of strong beer.
I sleep with restless listlessness.
To refuse to do.

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.

that, too, does not have a name

The sky is the frosted kind of grey.  I do not get up from bed.  She planted a kiss before she left and now is gone.  Something urgent on email.  A large plane can be heard leaving for somewhere.  The calendar is full on the days to come.  But I want to slow down, to pause, to stop momentarily.  To wake again when it is bright and some part of my soul is ready.  There is a worm somewhere inside.  It manifests itself in the plants.  A part of a row in the garden died seemingly overnight.  She noticed this at the doorstep.  I hadn't even known.  The last I saw the entire row was green.  How did they wither and die?  The sturdy tropical green cuttings of which I do not even know the name?  The grass by them are dry and dead too.  What about the soil?  I am too tired to check.  I go back to bed and nurse something that, too, does not have a name.  A kind of wariness.  Is it fatigue?  A kind of passive-aggressive stress finally manifesting itself?

the weight of nothing

what does one bear?

maybe no more or no less
than many others who, too
have their own stories.

i look at the dark night sky
the stars too far apart
from each other.

distances, of course,being 
arbitrary.  she is 

on the far side of the bed
on an island up north
continents away.

my mind's ear hears
an airplane.  also
a conjured memory

the audacity of its being.

cape town

if you come to visit a city, do so not as a tourist.  
else there will be many things you will miss.  

the tourist is always asked to see
the many beautiful things,  

of course he is also asked to see
the beautiful only.

two skies

east, daylight is rising.  dew and drops glisten from this dawn's heavy rain.  but west, on the other window--my writing seat is in the middle---gray.  in half an hour i will call the secretary, i will keep away half the day.  i have been gone too long from many places: how we can only exist once at a time.  sun spills on the floor.  the sound of an airplane leaving or arriving: perhaps both.


















 

remains of the beginning of day

3 slices of toast
3 slices of ripe papaya
2 kinds of cheese
half a bottle of lemon concentrate
coffee, dregs
some thin slices of carrots
half a glass of water
two dogs, pretending to go back to sleep
the quiet of the morning
faint imaginary sounds of birds
sound of a leaving plane
occasional sound of rain drop on some roof
a faraway dog bark
















 
 

flooding in another city

almost a week now national news tell nothing new:  flood and flooding somewhere:  the southwest monsoon; torrential rains; collapsed dykes and dams; overflowed rivers; and waves after waves of mudwaters having made their ways to the cities, mudwaters with the strength of twenty or more feet deep burying roads and cars and trucks and houses.  boats hovered by houses' roofs.  no Ark.  and crowding at the centers, the countless evacuees.

the local news tell a different story:  the collision of an oil tanker and a passenger boat.  more than two hundred missing.  a pregnant woman found floating at sea.  and that it has been more than seventy-two hours and so operations have changed from search-and-rescue to search-and-retrieval.  

government, as expected, is diligent on working on blame and accountability: they are out looking for a woman believed to have siphoned money.

the champion church is doing nothing.  while all the weather forecasters tell everyone to continue expecting rain.

but in this place, how the full moon shines quiet and bright.  i try.  the airline tickets lying in wait.














 

copenhagen

Copenhagen is not a real city, he says, reviewing the number of murders and theft, the number of people that is less 

than the population of stricken children in the humid city where we were 
eating eggs benedict in a place that smelled of vanilla.  A waiter named Denmark 

came to pour water.  The name on the tag on the crisp white shirt.  Only in this country, he adds, noticing the name.  I only thought what a happenstance--having known 

such penchant for first names:  a Xhemei, an Angus, a Lucy Pearl, a Lefer, a Lady Goddess,  
a Lady Macbeth, a Sir Lord, a Phil.Mighty, a Douglas McArthur, an Avril Lavigne.

Copenhagen is not a real city, he says again, pointing at more cities and stopping, perhaps
not without a touch, the cities in his Italy.  The man missing his home.

traveling short distances

1. it is thursday.  after having made a few arrangements, there is a four-hour breath before another plunge.  this is it, now, and i take it, even though i am unable to stop glancing at the clock, not knowing exactly whether it is out of apprehension or anticipation. 

2. after yet another meeting last night which thankfully did not extend 'til past eight, had a brief exchange with Greg who is not of this city and who is always a pleasure to talk with, mainly because the exchange, in another language and of ontological topics, is reminiscent of things.  last night, the brief conversation included the subject of philosophy being categorized in the social sciences vis a vie being categorized in the letters; also the idea of line as an illusion to which he answered phenomenology.  i do not know if it is his former monastic life and the considerable theology studies i've had, or the circles of people in the country of another time, space, place, and language that we both happen to know, or both of these somehow meet.   we do not talk about details of previous or current lives; these are irrelevant.

3. she looked extra pretty last night when i arrived and told her so.  you don't look exhausted at all at work, i joked and she laughed.  she had arrived earlier and had time to make dinner. i did the dishes and walked with the dogs.  stayed up 'til almost midnight doing paperwork.

4. read a poem before bed.  even in poetry, the sad, difficult world is always of beauty.