inside the ribcage

Here, at this time of the year, the sky flatten 
the hours. It becomes almost impossible to tell,
sometimes, the time unless you press your pulse

to know you are still among the living. Here,
where every thing has become so efficient and
then not. The selvedges are ripped, if one cares

to notice. Such small things like the seeing
through an opened window the lovers, now kissing,
have forgotten to close. Most of the time

every one has learned to move with flat-line
hearts that have become so civil, so tirelessly
euphemistic that at times I am beginning to feel

this calamity, incredibly scripted, un-human.

the silk road

Names are always beautiful. As beautiful 
as we can imagine them to be. Framing 
them with the lines of our wants, the unsaid 
and unanswered needs. We tell and we do not
tell; the yearnings are always difficult,

no words come, they balk at the touch.
If I may be direct, how will you respond?
If I tell you I wonder how it will be
to be right across you, the table meant
for two? It is possible.

All these exchanges happening while sharing
a metaphysical table. So it is this, we
have no bodies, no faces, no names; but
how the words flow. Moving and always
in a state of unsettled be-coming.

The silk road can be seen from outside
our window; a candle flickers, you unfold
a table napkin; I search for a word trying
to find an excuse to look at you.
Someone comes close, asks what we'll have
for dinner. 

wsw 18 mph

There are movies about this.
And books, and love affairs
and stories.
How there is a wall, call it
wind, geography, distance

upon which we press our ears
and listen to the other.
Words and breaths.
We place our palms flat
on the wall and listen to

the wind howl, the gusts
shaking the leafless treetops
and making the windows sound

as though knocking, to open.
But we do not. Knowing why
it is better, not.

waking up with no memory

It is the entanglements after. If there are any.
Most of the time, it is best

when both know it is nothing else. But that
spur of the moment--

muscles, adrenaline, the quickening of beats
towards cosmic release

before returning to the exhaustion of bodies 
and what is it that has always been there: our

own tired places in a slow and spinning world. 
It has been a long, long time

since.
Never quite losing sobriety facing passion.

Always steady to take the long drives 
and decide at least three steps ahead, as though

still playing chess with whoever it is across.
On better days,

I think myself in transit on a lucid boat
crossing an ocean called Weather&Time.

There has got to be a return or an arrival
somehow, although at the moment

my thoughts are only as simple 
as has she thought of me today.

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.

More nights ahead

We can put together a hundred or more possibilities,
letting two characters meet, in spite the number
of ways, streets, corners, bars, restaurants, cities.
Did you not once say you will have a hard drink
at the bar at the edge of your sleep? Even though cold,
I have returned to the uncertainty of outdoors now, 
stopping at diners where tired men and tired waitresses
call each other by name. The home fries both nostalgic
and sorry. Something always pulls me back. 

Sometimes I look up and watch flocks of birds, mostly
when flocks of young people pass by. Do they
know how we can devote our entire lives
to a cause truly lost?
How the foolish idealism of our once immortal
sense drove us to where we are now. Here...

And is it wrong to think women like you will always be
less lonely? I have come to deny myself. But 
how it bangs its fists on my door wanting
to be let out, telling me 
I am human, human, human. 
So I try to keep away from the door,
away from the bar at the edge of your sleep.

Preface

If you were to devote only one time to read 
a piece of Hegel's, take the Preface: it may be
the actual body of what he may have meant: how 
always it appears in the beginning of any book
yet, not the first thing to be written.
What he found 
was a horizon where conflicts settle themselves 
to remain settled as conflicts. A horizon 
we keep moving towards, in spite ourselves, 
we cannot ever reach. He died, the book 
unfinished. Might as well be. 

(ants in this world) a long goodbye 9

I can count now on one hand
The number of days left on this little island
Of sweets. Days the colour of turmeric.
(It rains just now, wet monsoon has come)

This is a place of hope, no matter
What its people say. More than half its year
The bamboo chimes hanging on my front door
Sounds of water. The shore half hour away.

When the breeze blows on your beloved's hair
And when you see grown men and women
Come out at downpour, play with their children,
You will know why 

Tired white men find their way here
To rest at last from the world at large.
But I leave. By the cosmos' grace, I leave.
(An ant's work what we do. So little
         
To add to so much more.)
And two days before I leave, I shall ferry
Visit a spider woman in these islands, 
Who wrote poetry of memory, being, becoming

It shall be a moment in her herbs garden
Where there will be no promise
Only a doing by understanding
This so much work, this so much work

More than an entire ant's life can do. 

(ants in this world) a long goodbye 9

I can count now on one hand
The number of days left on this little island
Of sweets. Days the colour of turmeric.
(It rains just now, wet monsoon has come)

This is a place of hope, no matter
What its people say. More than half its year
The bamboo chimes hanging on my front door
Sounds of water. The shore half hour away.

When the breeze blows on your beloved's hair
And when you see grown men and women
Come out at downpour, play with their children,
You will know why 

Tired white men find their way here
To rest at last from the world at large.
But I leave. With the cosmos' grace, I leave.
(An ant's work what we do. So little
         
To add to so much more.)
And two days before I leave, I shall ferry
Visit a spider woman in these islands, 
Who wrote poetry of memory, being, becoming

It shall be a moment in her herbs garden
Where there will be no promise
Only a doing by understanding
This so much work, this so much work

More than an entire ant's life can do. 

From across

There she is again, the woman with a basketful of mabolo. 
Velvet fruit that must be animal,kitten furry on my hand
Yesterday it looked at me with eyes that meow, meow, meow
Is what the kitten said meow, meow, meow. The woman said

Be careful. Kitten is small and so is the velvet apple
Like puppy head pat, pat, pat. Love, love, love woman said.
She is waving at me now from the other side. I see her
Smile waving her hand. She crosses the water, knee deep

Waist deep, too deep, she says I love you I love you 
I love you and we are on a paper boat
She paddles and says Look! Look at the fish! And I swim
And my skin laughs because it is water, not

So loud, I laugh and laugh and flap about but I don't.
The woman said very good you can do it. I find my hands
Into a circle tracing dots into a heart, Who am I?
The woman asks. She is crossing the waters and there is 

Ripple behind her, there are sounds, there is a car
Brooom, brooom, brooom it is loud and the triangle
On paper is sharp I try to cover it blue, blue, blue
Because it is noisy and loud and sharp and bright

I squint my eyes and see the line and clench my teeth,
Hold the pen, fingers like this, catch a fish, want 
The wide and flail my arms but I don't. The woman said
Very good you can do it I love you I love you I love you.

There she is again, the woman with a basketful of mabolo.
Across the water across the table there are sounds
Something moves at the corners of my eyes, it is breeze.
There are suns on my paper and we are on a boat.

Who am I? she says. She opens her hand and there it is
A mabolo, velvet kitten puppy fish circle dots heart. 





for An

Disenchantment

Is perhaps what happens
time and again until 

believing and loving
becomes hard work.

It must begin sooner 
than later in others

more frequently and less
to some, possibly why

it cannot be helped: being
lonely whether one knows it

or not; there are always
alternative companions:

a book, a dog, a date
and sometimes, shadows.

how would you want to be born

If you were to decide, would you want to be born
into exactly the same way you are now?
There is a correct answer and there is 
a truthful one. The correct answer is

always a Yes for all believed-to-be moral
reasons including resignation to fate.
The more truthful one, far from it. Why
would you choose again exactly the same

circumstance that led you beating your own breast
calling out to a universe that does not answer
why all these senseless pain (war-torn refugees,
hunger, true hunger and true abandonment) while

others worry more wind to sail their yacht?
The young people at the university yesterday
organised themselves and came to the streets 
raised their fists in claims of revolution.

Some of them took their poetry and slammed,
invited me to come and speak (with them).
I could not place a word to what I feel.
Perhaps I have grown too old:

I still want to believe, but

the kitten under the rain

a boy was keeping a kitten
away from the corner of their yard

the kitten squeezed between potted plant
and garbage bin

soaked because it had been raining 
two days and the streets still wet

my dog tried to sniff the kitten
the kitten tried to defend itself

tiny claws tiny fangs all ferociousness
in a tiny life in a tiny body

i showed the boy how to hold 
the kitten by its ear

it will remember its mother
and stop being fierce

so the boy held the kitten
the way its mother did

the kitten remembered its mother
and trusted the boy

and the boy threw the kitten away

this morning

Is it the certainty 
of loss that keeps us
going? That certain
kind of lack

kind of incompleteness
completes us. 

For what is "fullness"
and "perfection" 
in utter satisfaction?
But unsatisfactory.

Our lives are completed
by a sense of incomplete.
Perfection 
because imperfect. 

Else, a life dormant.
A life inert. 

So continuously we sing
memories of wounds.
Old old scars 
never heals. 

Or we pause on moments
perfect like this:
early morning sun 
through curtains to 
the floor, dog beside, 
detection book on lap, 
earl grey tea like new 
beginning, local bread 
and feta, some birds. 
A love letter
written to be given
sometime in the future.

Which will be 
not very long from now. 
As I anticipate 
the news anytime, 
sending me to another
place away
from here. 

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.

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.

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.

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?